


This distant image of our tiny world.

by churchofyourcurves



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Mars AU, Space AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churchofyourcurves/pseuds/churchofyourcurves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Space AU</p><p>Carmilla Karnstein had chased after the Mars program because of the chance to explore the universe, to push the boundaries of human knowledge and reach, but she’d also done it to get away from people.</p><p>Unfortunately for her, some people insist on being heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the main part of my birthday present for the most awesome person, [connectthedots67](connecthedots67.tumblr.com).
> 
> Decided to chuck this into its own story because its so damn long, so I figured it kind of deserves it. Haven't put as much editing or time into it as I would like because of time constraints, but hopefully you guys enjoy it nevertheless :)

Carmilla checked the stats monitor on her forearm, her eyes scanning the different numbers as they fluctuated for half a minute before finally settling. Around her, the red of the planet sat still, the sound of her breathing inside the helmet giving the stillness an eerie sense of life.

“Karnstein?” the voice came in through her helmet speakers, not as clear as she’d like, but it’d do.

“All good.” She held a thumbs up high in the air, high enough that the various cameras perched on top of the base behind her could pick it up.

It seemed like everything at Base Hermes ‘would do’. Hermes was a way station for ground travel between the Zeus and Athena bases, a place where personnel could stop over for food, rest, and to get their Rovers checked over. Everything was transient at Hermes, well, everything except for the small team that had been stationed there.

Carmilla walked over to the solar panel that had started glitching, looking over it carefully to try and find what had caused the slightly lower than normal output. It wasn’t anything serious, but at Hermes even the smallest of things were investigated. It wasn’t out of diligence - it was out of boredom.

As the Rover technology had improved over the years since the colonisation of Mars, the need for a way station lessened. It left Base Hermes feeling like a forgotten petrol station by an old, rarely used highway.

Coming out to check on the solar panels provided some respite from kicking around the workshop while avoiding the lovelorn sighs of their mechanic, Kirsch, which were directed at the Base Commander, Lawrence. He’d been assigned to Hermes a few months ago after finishing his qualifications, and Carmilla had to be present for the disgustingly high school process of him prodding at the Commander like a child, testing her boundaries, and then becoming enamoured with her strength and authority.

Carmilla had chased after the Mars program because of the chance to explore the universe, to push the boundaries of human knowledge and reach, but she’d also done it to get away from people.

At Hermes, she had been stuffed into a sardine can with them. She’d had to endure them for most waking moments of her day, in her space, asking her things, talking to her, expecting her to reply.

She ran a gloved hand over the bottom of the panel, examining the tech as closely as she could through the grimy visor of her helmet. The tip of her thumb caught along an inconsistency, and she sighed.

Easy fix, damn it. Last time she’d gotten to travel to the absurdly well-stocked Base Zeus for a part, but this wouldn’t take much more than some buffing and electrical tape for good measure.

“Yo, bro, how’s it looking?” Kirsch’s voice came over her comms and she rolled her eyes, wondering who had given him the microphone.

Despite his frat bro persona, she had a grudging respect for the mechanic, whose annoying chatter about tech would sometimes offer insightful ideas. If he didn’t come off as such a dumbass he might have even been posted to Athena, where they were constantly making technological advances that left Hermes in empty red dust.

“Dude?” he asked again.

Carmilla sighed; he was the type who didn’t consider silence an answer. “It’s fine, just gunked up from the last storm.”

“Bummer,” he said, as if he knew how much Carmilla preferred to be working out in the dust bowl to being inside. It was moments like this that she thought she might have underestimated him.

“Oh hey, we’ve got two scientists, coming in hot from the east.” There was a pause and then, said through a smirk, “And they’re pretty hot t-”

Any idea that she had underestimated him immediately disappeared from her mind, as she snapped off her comms. The Commander would have a fit about her closing the line, even though she was only five metres away from the entrance, but she didn’t care.

She straightened up slowly; everything in the space suits had to be done slowly. It wasn’t that they were weighty - even if they were, the low Mars gravity would have countered it - it was just that they were so bulky that it felt like moving while being wrapped in thick foam mats.

As she made her way back to the base, she let her eyes drift over the craggy mountains that towered around them. Hermes was built in the narrowest part of valley, as if desperate to funnel each passer-by towards them.

Without forest or animals or anything else vaguely Earth-like, the mountains around them stood tall, bare and eternal. Something about the eroded stone felt like pillars to past civilisations, even though they were the first.

She turned her attention to the east mouth of the valley. She could already see the Rover in the distance, sending up streams of smoke and dust as it closed in.

She frowned.

Turning her comms back on, she asked, “How hot are we talking here?”

Kirsch seemed unbothered by her cutting him off, humming and answering, “I don’t know, maybe like nines-”

“The Rover, dumbass.”

“Oh! They fell off a mountain while doing some science, botany, thing. They seemed pretty freaked, but you know scientists.”

She did know scientists. They lived in perfect white, glass rooms and complained if the thermostat was off by a few degrees. They didn’t have ripped space suits patched together with electrical tape, and stats monitors that glitched.

Under ordinary circumstances, she would have gone into the base and made herself scarce. She wasn’t good at meet and greets, that was the job for the ‘morale officer’ (Carmilla despised whoever came up with that job) Perry. Carmilla hadn’t said more than five words to Perry over the past year, but she appreciated the woman’s ability to turn crappy rations into semi-edible food, and her tendency to steer visitors well away from her.

But something didn’t feel right about the way the Rover was screaming across the planet’s surface.

“Patch me in to them.”

Kirsch didn’t reply for a long moment and Carmilla checked her comm system. She was still linked up. She was about to deliver a scathing insult, when Kirsch coughed and asked hesitantly, “You sure? After last time, the Commander said you’re not allowed to-”

“Just do it, numb nuts,” Carmilla snapped.

He muttered something that Carmilla didn’t catch through the static, and then there was a click that signalled she was connected to the scientists’ Rover comms.

“What have you idiots done?”

A stunned silence met her question, before a defensive reply of, “We aren’t idiots.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Carmilla said bluntly. “What happened?”

Another voice, the second scientist, replied, “I was taking some samples from Olympus Mons-”

If Carmilla hadn’t been wearing a bulky space suit, she would have pinched the bridge of her nose.

“-and we were driving up one of the slopes-”

Carmilla groaned.

“-and one of the wheels slipped-”

“Okay,” Carmilla interrupted, “stop, before I have an aneurysm. Get the damn Rover over here, and believe me when I say, you two most certainly _are_ idiots.”

“We are _n_ -”

Carmilla shut off her comms and made her way into the base, feeling like the fury pouring off her might cause the suit to burst into flames if she didn’t get it off _now_.

When the airlock sealed she ripped the helmet off, a string of curse words pouring out under her breath. It helped a little, but not enough, and when she entered the base the morale officer was standing there with an apprehensive look on her face.

“What?” Carmilla snarled. Word tally for the year rose to six.

“Perhaps you should go to the Mechanics wing?” Perry suggested in a voice half an octave higher than normal.

Carmilla grunted and walked in that direction, pulling off pieces of her suit and letting them drop to the floor as she went. Perry had asked on the scientists’ behalf, but she didn’t have to. There was no other place Carmilla wanted to be right now, and she definitely didn’t want to be anywhere near those idiots when they arrived.

She had just entered the Mechanics wing (‘wing’ was generous, really it just meant the leftmost room of the building) when Kirsch rushed up to her closely followed by Lawrence.

“I’m so sor-” was all the mechanic got through before the Commander interrupted him.

“I thought I told you, no talking to visitors.”

Carmilla scowled. “But I get so very, very lonely.”

She pushed past the two ridiculously tall people, her hand rougher on Kirsch’s shoulder than it was on Lawrence’s. The Commander followed her to the workbench, rounding it on the other side as she tried to trap Carmilla into looking at her.

“You know, when they complain _I_ ’m the one who gets my ass handed to me by Control. You think I like getting yelled at about how some super genius got their feelings hurt when you couldn’t keep your mouth shut?”

Carmilla picked up one of the screwdrivers, angrily attacking an air filter she was meant to be taking apart to clean.

Commander Lawrence let out a tired sigh - this was a dance that they’d done a million times over a variety of topics in the three years they’d worked together. “Can you at least nod, or something, so I know you heard me?”

Carmilla’s efforts on the air filter paused, and she lifted her face to Lawrence to raise an eyebrow slowly.

The Commander gave up with a weary, “Good enough,” leaving the wing with her shoulders pulled into a tense line halfway up to her ears.

When the door closed behind her, Kirsch moved into the space she had left across from Carmilla. His expression was tentative, unsure if he could speak without having grievous bodily harm inflicted on him. Carmilla wasn’t sure either.

She felt the hot buzz sweep her body in waves, making her hands tense and relax in an erratic rhythm. It was fuelled by her frustration at the scientists, at being reprimanded like a child, at the _God_ damn air filter with the _God_ damn worn down screw heads that the tip of the screwdriver kept slipping off of.

She threw the air filter at the opposite wall, but before it could hit it with a satisfying thump, Kirsch snatched it out of the air and grabbed a smaller screwdriver from the table. He worked on the filter for a few seconds and then pulled it apart, putting it in pieces on the bench in front of Carmilla.

Carmilla stared down at the parts before pushing them off the desk with the back of her hand. Kirsch gathered them off the floor and put them back on the desk. Carmilla pushed them back off. Kirsch put them back on. Carmilla pushed them back off.

Kirsch threw the pieces over his shoulder so that they landed on one of the benches along to the wall, skittering along the metal counter.

Carmilla scowled and threw the screwdriver down on the table, snapping her fingers so that her mini Rover - Sojourner, who was about the size of a small dog - followed at her heels as she left the wing.

The layout of Hermes was lengthwise - the entrance airlock lead onto the circular foyer area, which doubled as a communications hub. The Mechanics wing was to the left, through a round metal door with scorch marks on the workshop side, which partly blacked out the circular windows that bordered the top half of it. The dining and kitchen area was to the right of the foyer, and past that was the bathrooms and bunks.

Which meant to get anywhere else in the base, Carmilla had to pass through the foyer. Usually this didn’t bother her, but this time it happened to be at just the time that the scientists were being greeted by Commander Lawrence and Perry.

Carmilla stopped just inside the foyer, and for a moment she seriously considered turning around and walking back into the Mechanics wing, but then one of them spotted her. The short blonde scientist started towards her, finger wagging in a ludicrous manner because she hadn’t taken off her space suit yet (barring the helmet), giving her a portly, uncoordinated look.

“You!” she exclaimed, pressing herself way too far into Carmilla’s personal bubble, finger still waving furiously through the air. “Where do you get off being such a- such a-”

“ _Lau_ ra,” the other scientist with short, fiery hair pleaded with her. They looked like they’d already suffered a long rant by the tiny blonde, and for a moment Carmilla almost felt sorry for them.

“Do you need me to wait here while you come up with something or can I be dismissed?” Carmilla asked through gritted teeth. Sure, there was humour in the fact that the miniature scientist was trying to admonish her, but the Commander’s eyes were hard on her, keeping her from saying what she wanted to say.

The scientist, Laura, let out a loud sound of fury, her gloved hands bunching into fists as she stomped off, the suit making gentle swishing sounds as she did.

The other scientist with the fiery hair grimaced at them all, as if this was something that happened a lot, and quickly followed Laura.

Carmilla looked at the other two as if to say - who’s going to tell her she just stormed off into a closet? But she lost interest quickly, and headed in the direction of the bunks.

That night, after the sounds of eating and talking had died down in the dining area, Carmilla snuck out of the bunks, unplugging from her music, to finally grab some food. It was normal for her to skip eating with the rest of the base, and Perry usually left something in the small fridge for her. Tonight was no exception, and Carmilla took a large bite out of the wrap as she sat down at the table.

Even though there weren’t many people at the base, it was easy to make the space feel full, and Carmilla revelled in these moments when everyone else had retired to their bunks and she’d sit in the dim half-light, letting herself explore ideas for inventions that would make the harsh land of Mars just a little bit more habitable.

The door to the dining area opened and Carmilla tensed, her grip on the wrap turning strangling for a moment.

The scientist, Laura, stared at her from the doorway. “Oh.” Laura looked just as disappointed at seeing Carmilla, as Carmilla was at seeing her.

Laura hesitated, and Carmilla could see her weigh up her options. Finally, she decided to enter, and they both slumped in the other’s presence.

“I didn’t know anyone would be here,” Laura said, as if an explanation was needed.

“Well, there is.”

Laura froze at the coldness in Carmilla’s voice, and a scowl appeared on her face as she went to the fridge, but she didn’t reply. She started to go through the fridge, moving aside a jug of beer Kirsch had brewed to take another wrap out. Carmilla eyed the wrap, comparing it to the one in her hands, before her lips pulled into a thin line and she put it down on the plastic tray.

Laura sat down at the other end of the table, very specifically not looking in Carmilla’s direction. Then, she very quickly spun around and blurted, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Okay,” Carmilla said slowly, rolling the ‘o’ around in her mouth before letting it drop out.

“Aren’t you going to apologise for being super rude?” Laura demanded, her expression all righteous and expectant.

“Did you apologise to me just so I would apologise to you?”

Laura startled at that, her eyes widening, then narrowing, and finally turning away from Carmilla and shoving a huge bite of the wrap into her mouth.

The silence filled the room between them, but Carmilla was only focused on the wrap in front of her and weighing up her hunger.

“We didn’t _mean_ to damage the Rover.”

Carmilla sighed and pushed the plastic tray away from her.

“At Athena there’s a huge pressure to keep making new discoveries, to ‘push the boundaries of science’,” Laura said in a hollow, deep voice that was obviously her trying to imitate someone. “We knew there was something on Olympus Mons, and we had to-”

“Do you know what the black zone is?” Carmilla asked, not forcefully, but frankly enough that Laura looked contrite.

Carmilla waited for an answer and eventually Laura mumbled, “It’s where you’re not meant to go.”

“Right. And what is Olympus Mons classified as under the MSE Code?”

“A black zone,” Laura replied, staring down at her hands as if she was a very small child being yelled at by an adult.

Carmilla made a sound in the back of her throat, standing up from the table and throwing the wrap out, before heading to the Mechanics wing. She heard Laura stand and start to follow her, and _wow_ she had not missed having scientists around.

“I just, I know that I wasn’t meant to be there, and that was _to_ tally my bad, but I think that you should admit that maybe there’s something wrong with the system in place, you know.”

Carmilla cut through the foyer easily in the dark. The stumble and sound of a wheeled chair skating across the floor proved that Laura hadn’t managed to do it so easily.

“Why are you so desperate to not be at fault, poindexter?”

“I’m not!” Laura protested hotly. As Carmilla waited for the Mechanics door to open, Laura caught up with her, and slipped into the wing behind her. “There’s just a larger picture.”

Carmilla swiped her hand across the light control, so that the lights flickered on in the wing. In the centre of the floor space sat the scarred, dented wreck of the scientists’ Rover that had been brought in through the side exit. Sojourner came to life in the corner and scooted over to her with a whir. She leaned down to bump the top of his casing with her hand, forgetting for a moment that Laura was next to her, until she felt her eyes watching her. Carmilla felt a sudden hot flash of shame, as though the scientist had seen her naked, but in a way that had nothing to do with her body.

“You have a mini Rover?” Laura asked, watching Sojourner dash around the workshop. Mini Rovers hadn’t been used since early Mars exploration, Sojourner was named after the first. Carmilla had repurposed what had been classified as a relic, fitted him out with new parts, a new design, and new programming, and now he was the only functioning one outside of a museum.

Ignoring Laura, Carmilla gathered her tools off the evenly spread hooks bolted to the walls and dumped them on the floor next to the scientists’ Rover, causing Sojourner to scoot quickly out of the way. She went to the pneumatic jack by the wall and wheeled it over. The jack was a simple looking piece of equipment, with three metal prongs that hovered above the ground and joined at a long triangular base, which had a red and green button, and a metal handle to move it.

She positioned the prongs evenly under the Rover and stomped on the green button with her toe. It took a moment, buckling slightly under the weight with a hiss, but the Rover slowly started to lift. When it was high enough she hit her heel against the green button and kicked over a creeper, the rubber wheels skidding jerkily across the composite plastic floor, before lying down on it, and pushing herself under the body of the Rover.

“Anyway,” Laura said, “I figured since we’re going to be here for a while, we should make peace. Put our first impressions behind us.”

Under the Rover, Carmilla mimed gagging.

“You know?” Laura asked after a long beat.

Instead of replying, Carmilla examined the state of the Rover’s belly. “Wrench 4B.”

Carmilla saw Laura’s feet do an awkward shuffle so she could look at the tools next to her, as if she’d be able to recognise 4B on sight. Carmilla rolled her eyes. “Not you.”

“Oh, I-”

Sojourner went over to the spread of tools, searching the ID chips embedded in each handle, before finding 4B and picking it up with a magnetised prod. He brought it to Carmilla and after she'd pried it free, he bumped the nose of his casing against her fist. (It was a behaviour that Kirsch had taught him - and one she’d never forgive him for.)

She worked at the bolts of the mangled buckling, each revolution scraping the wrench against the metal, until she could finally pull it free. It dropped to the floor with a thick clunk, and she reached deeper into the engine to see how much internal damage had been wrought.

“I thought you were the engineer.”

Carmilla wasn’t sure if she was more surprised that the scientist had stuck around, or annoyed. Those two emotions were definitely in the mix.

“Mechanical engineer. I helped design this model.”

“Oh my God,” Laura said, as if a puzzle piece had just slid into place and it made Carmilla shift in discomfort. “You’re _Carmilla_.”

Before Carmilla could get out some cutting comment, which probably would have included a patronising pet name, Laura continued, “I work with Ell! Well, not _with_ , but she works in the lab next to-”

“Get out.”

There was a pause. “I-”

“Get _the fuck out_.”

She watched Laura’s feet hesitate before they left the room and the door closed behind her. Her hands shook so hard that the wrench clattered to the floor and she had to grip onto the belly of the Rover to try and ground herself.

\---

Laura walked into the foyer and Carmilla stood to walk out. It had been like this for the last three days. Carmilla did her best to avoid her altogether but it was a small base and running into each other was a certainty. She considered making up reasons to spend her time outside, but the quicker she helped Kirsch fix the Rover the sooner the scientists could leave, so she just chose to silently walk out of the room whenever Laura walked in. Part of her whispered that Laura would go back and tell Ell and they’d laugh over how pathetic it all was, but whatever.

Laura crossed the room quickly and blocked her exit, a defiant look painted across her face. Carmilla briefly considered running out the airlock and letting Mars’ atmosphere do what it would.

“I don’t like Ell.”

Carmilla’s curiosity won out over her wish to escape. For the moment.

“I’m sorry I brought her up, I wasn’t thinking. It’s just... I’ve heard about you. Not from her, I mean I’ve never talked to her, but-” Laura stopped herself. “I heard about what happened.”

Carmilla’s urge to run outside grew tenfold.

“You were amazing,” Laura said without a single trace of irony. She stated it as if it was an undisputed fact, like Earth’s gravity being just over two and a half times stronger than Mars’, or there being 4.7 litres of blood in the average human body. She said it as if the statement stood on it own, like it didn’t need any evidence or proof, it just was.

The ‘were’ stuck in Carmilla’s throat. The past tense felt like an itchy bandage over a tender wound, and even more so because she knew it was right. She knew that running away from a bad break up to the most isolated, backwater place on the entire red planet had changed the ‘are’ to ‘were’.

Laura’s eyes dropped to Sojourner, who was doing lazy donuts through the foyer. “Are.”

Again, Carmilla felt the urge to throw herself, bare and vulnerable, onto the surface of Mars again, but this time it was for a completely different reason.

\---

“Good morning!”

Laura hopped onto the counter of the workshop and slid a mug of coffee Carmilla’s way. Carmilla was wearing the magnifying glasses she’d crafted from a pair of Kirsch’s old lenses and parts she’d cannibalised from a microscope. They didn’t look as clean as the surgical ones, but they did their job well. When she looked in Laura’s direction, Laura shielded her eyes from the powerful torchlight perched on the top of the frames.

Carmilla switched the torch off and took a generous sip of the coffee. It tasted like dirt, but Perry knew how to make it taste like nice dirt at least. She took the glasses off, dropping them onto the counter, and examined Laura suspiciously. “Why are you so chipper?”

“The sun is out, 80% of the samples we took are viable, what isn’t there to be chipper about?”

Carmilla pushed the part she had been working on closer to Laura, who examined it as if she would have some idea of what it meant. Both of them knew she wouldn’t, but Carmilla still offered it and Laura still looked.

“What am I looking at?”

“Something that needs replacing.”

Laura grimaced sheepishly. “Oh.”

Carmilla leaned back in the chair, stretching out her spine, and rubbing her eyes with the meaty part of her palms, sending veins of colours shooting across the back of her eyelids. It might be morning to Laura, but Carmilla hadn’t slept yet and her eyes were going blurry from focusing through the glasses for so long.

“You’re lucky you kept 80% of the samples viable with this thing.”

The part, although small, was crucial for the vacuum-sealed part of the Rover’s storage compartment, keeping any scientific samples in the exact right atmosphere. It had been one of the main things Carmilla had worked on, and it was what set this Rover apart from the others.

“I may have fiddled with some of the environmental controls from my suit and kept them in there,” Laura admitted.

Despite herself, Carmilla was impressed, and it must have shown on her face because Laura smiled back uncomfortably, shifting out from under the engineer’s gaze and hopping off the counter. “So, are you headed to Zeus?”

Carmilla’s eyes followed Laura as the scientist wandered around the workshop, poking at the different Rover parts that had been laid bare for them to work on. “Looks like it.”

Laura picked up the soldering iron, playing with it and making a stream of smoke rise from the tip before quickly putting it back on the table. “Do you,” she started slowly, drawing out the syllables, and then asked the rest of the question in one breath, “think that I could come?”

“You want to come to Zeus?”

“I’ve never been.”

Carmilla considered her before finally nodding. “Alright.” Laura started to celebrate, but Carmilla held her pointer finger up in front of Laura’s face. “But I have some rules.”

\---

Laura eyed the Hermes Rover control panel suspiciously. It had several wires hanging out of it, which had been messily wrapped in electrical tape. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Sure,” Carmilla replied. She glanced at Laura out of the corner of her eye. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Laura echoed, her voice rising several notes as her voice box tightened.

Carmilla smirked to herself. This was so easy, it almost took the fun out of it. Almost.

Laura was manically clutching her tablet to her chest, as if the piece of technology would protect her if the Rover suddenly broke down around them.

Carmilla spotted a rock the size of an exercise ball ahead of them and veered the Rover towards it as subtly as she could. Laura didn’t notice, her attention was still fixed on the control panel, like a guard dog obsessively watching the front door. The rock hit the front bumper with a loud crack, causing the entire Rover to shudder, and Laura jumped in her seat, scrambling to grip onto the seat belt and hug the tablet tighter.

The rock gave way easily to the bumper, crumbling under the protective guard Kirsch had built, and Carmilla couldn’t help but laugh at the breathlessly panicked way Laura’s eyes darted around them.

Carmilla’s laughter was like a cold bucket of water to Laura’s panic, and she shoved the still snickering engineer in the shoulder. “Not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

Laura shoved her again and Carmilla held up her pointer finger. “Hey, no shoving the driver.”

The scientist rolled her eyes, but dropped her hand. “How long until we get there?”

“Well, we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes, so, four hours and forty-five minutes. By the way,” Carmilla reminded her, “you only get to ask that two more times.”

“I know,” Laura replied sulkily, even though she had clearly forgotten.

They still had another ten minutes before they were free of the mountain range, and Carmilla snuck glances over to the scientist as she finally managed to relax. The shock seemed to have shaken free her tension, letting her take in their surroundings, and she was staring up at the craggy mountain faces with an open-faced wonder.

Carmilla could remember when she felt like that, although she doubted her emotions had been so naked on her face.

“When did you ship here?”

Laura startled at Carmilla’s voice, too caught up in the mountains, and for a moment Carmilla was surprised too. She certainly hadn’t thought the question through before she’d asked it, but upon seeing Laura’s reaction she realised how weird it was that she’d asked it.

“The fourth phase,” Laura replied, her eyes going back to climbing the ridges as soon as she’d answered, hungry to drink in more of the landscape.

The fourth phase had happened five years ago, and consisted of mostly botanists and environmental engineers - trying to find new ways to utilise Mars’ water and soil to grow plants. Carmilla had come with the third phase, which was two years prior to that. If Laura had come in the fourth phase then it was no surprise that she hadn’t been to Zeus before. By then all the different bases had been established as very separate.

Carmilla expected Laura to ask which phase she’d been, so she was caught off guard when Laura instead asked, “Has anyone ever sampled these mountains?”

Carmilla shook her head. “Black zone.”

Laura made a small sound in the back of her throat, but it was little more than her just acknowledging that she’d heard Carmilla. After a long beat, she turned to her. “Can you stop the Rover? I need to test something.”

Carmilla checked the charge on the Rover. “Ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes,” Laura promised.

Carmilla sighed and put the Rover into park. They both put on their helmets and Laura’s feet danced in place as Carmilla let out the pressure from the Rover and opened the hatch. Laura scrambled out of the Rover, yanking herself through the top hatch and almost slipping in her eagerness to get outside.

As Laura jumped to the ground Carmilla stood on the chairs, straddling the space between them to lift her head out of the hatch. She crossed her arms over the roof, watching the scientist as she walked as quickly as she could to the mountain walls. In the suit she looked like she was waddling, each step over-correcting so that she wouldn’t have to worry about falling.

When Laura finally reached the rock walls, she held up her tablet and set to work. Carmilla continued to stand there for another minute before getting bored and dropping back into her seat to drum out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

Fifteen minutes later, Laura got back into the Rover with a wild, excited look in her eyes.

Carmilla recognised the look, she’d seen it on Ell’s face every time she’d discovered something or made some sort of break through. The words that Carmilla had always said to the look felt like a hard lump in her throat, each letter scraping the inside of her oesophagus, digging into her as she swallowed and re-sealed the Rover.

The second Laura’s helmet was off she started talking about the rock face; what she’d found, and what it meant. Carmilla was slower to take off her helmet, lost in the sickening familiarity that had pooled at the bottom of her stomach. She became semi-aware of the fact that Laura had stopped speaking, and turned to her, trying to shove her thoughts down so they didn’t show in her eyes.

The expectant look Laura was giving her made Carmilla ask, “What?”

Something left Laura’s eye, some glimmer, and Carmilla was relieved to see it go, but she also wanted to chase it back, to return it to Laura’s eyes.

When Laura finally spoke she mumbled, “Nothing.”

For the rest of the trip to Zeus, Laura watched the terrain pass them by, while Carmilla stared at the skyline.

\---

Base Zeus rose like a monster on the horizon, a hulking building that shone against the dirt surroundings. The outside of it was covered in a reinforced polyethylene sheeting, which was an opaque pearl colour that shimmered in the light. It almost made it look like a mirage, but the sharp glint of steel solidified the image, a firm skeletal structure woven through the pearly sheeting. The exterior sheet moved with the wind, buffeting out or pulling gaunt against the frame.

The main part of the base was a large dome, which was far wider than it was tall, and around the rim of the dome there were several different sections that linked out, some were small circular hubs, while others were long rectangular ones reaching out like roots along the ground. The hospital was the longest protruding section; it sat parallel to the horizon when driving from Hermes, and the outside had long been stained a rusty colour.

She still remembered the taste of the hospital air. It was the closest thing on this planet to Earth air, carefully concocted in a laboratory as all things here were. There was some reasoning behind it, it had been explained to her, but she hadn’t been able to listen, distracted by the person in the next bed over who was crying.

“Wow,” Laura breathed out as she stared at Zeus.

The broad building usually had that effect on people. While Athena took advantage of its surroundings, Zeus was built on a flat plain, so it dominated the landscape. It was the second permanent structure to be built on Mars (the first being Hera), and by far the largest. What the exterior didn’t show, however, was how deep into the ground it went.

As they approached, the mouth of the building came into focus. It was a long sliding airlock, wide enough to fit four Rovers side-by-side, but only 2 metres tall. Still, the width was somehow more intimidating than if it had been tall, Carmilla let the Rover idle as she patched into the comms system.

“Knock, knock.”

“Clearance,” the reply came, completely empty of humour.

“Omega Epsilon Sigma.”

There was a pause and then the doors opened. When there was enough room for the Rover to slip through, Carmilla jumped it forward and the doors closed behind them, sealing them into the base.

\---

_Three years ago_

The entrance bay was a large grey room, one of the only ones with a paved floor, because of the Rovers. There was a fleet of them to the side, Zeus’ exploration Rovers, plus the few visitors from other bases. Usually the job was stressful, there was a high degree of traffic to coordinate, and you were dealing with everyone from the highest Command officers, to other techies.

Right now, it was dead quiet. They were experiencing one of the worst storms since colonisation, which meant that the two door techs on duty were stuck with nothing to do. But two of them still had to be scheduled for some stupid bureaucratic reason.

They were seated at their consoles, which were perched on separate platforms two metres away from each other. It was meant to promote efficiency, but it usually resulted in them tossing a rubber ball back and forth when they got bored. Right now, however, the mood between them was far too sour.

It had been Mel’s fault that they were scheduled, she’d drawn the short straw and Theo was her duty partner. She couldn’t blame him for being moody - standing guard over a bunch of Rovers was not a great way to spend what was basically a holiday, given that everyone else was in the central part of the compound on a safety lockdown.

Mel squinted as she stared at the monitors, most of the image was a mess but she picked up the figure amongst the blur of dust. A _person_.

“Shit!” She jumped up from her console, using the railing to swing herself around it and land on the garage floor. “Open the airlock!”

Theo frowned at her, his expression a mix of curiosity and fear. “We can’t, the storm hasn’t passed fully yet.”

“It’s passed enough,” she yelled over her shoulder as she ran to the bay doors, “open the goddamn airlock!” She stepped into one of the slim suits they had by the doors. They weren’t designed to withstand much time on the outside, but she didn’t need much. She twisted on her gloves, boots, and paused for a moment over the oxygen tank. Those needed ten minutes to boot up, and would also require a stats monitor.

She grabbed one of the portable oxygen supplies, it was only as big as her fist and would give her fifteen minutes of oxygen, twenty tops, but that was enough. She positioned it over her nose, securing it with the elastic, and pulled on the helmet. With every joint in the suit sealed, she went over to the now partly opened doors and sidestepped through them.

“Seal it,” she said over the comms. With the oxygen supply on her nose it turned her voice nasal, but he did it anyway. The airlock started to adjust the pressure and she refused to let her mind travel as she waited for the green light to flick on next to the outside airlock doors.

Then it did.

\---

The inside airlock doors opened and Carmilla eased the Rover through the doors, pulling it over to the marked visitors area. There weren’t any other visitor Rovers, which wasn’t a surprise. Over the years, the bases had established their own self-sufficient systems, plus regular stock runs from Zeus took care of any other issues that came up.

Unless you happened to be stationed at Base Hermes, with its lacklustre storeroom and subpar tech.

Carmilla climbed out of the hatch first, hopping off the Rover’s roof and careful to hide her smile at the door tech that was running from her console to greet her. The one person on Mars that she could somewhat tolerate, she certainly couldn’t make it obvious, or word would spread and people might talk to her even more often than they did now.

When Mel reached her she came to a dead stop, as if she hadn’t just run across the length of the bay, but there was warmth in her dark eyes that she wasn’t quite able to tuck away. A strand of her hair had come loose from her ponytail, the black ringlet twisting next to her face, quirking the otherwise dull look of the grey uniform.

“Karnstein.”

“Callis.”

Instead of embracing, they stood in place, regarding each other, their chins tipped slightly up in a show of dominance.

“Nice to see you arriving in a Rover.”

“Are you going to make that joke every time?”

Laura landed next to Carmilla as Mel replied, “I haven’t decided yet.” Then, her attention snapped to the scientist and she offered her a polite smile, but the width of it made it look like Laura was the one she’d known for years. “Welcome to Zeus, Dr Hollis.”

\---

Carmilla walked the aisles of the Zeus stock room assertively, each step echoing through the basement warehouse. She didn’t even seem to be scanning the shelves, just glancing up at them every so often to orientate herself, as she continued to her destination.

Laura and the stock room attendant trailed behind her, Laura trying to take in as much as she could while still keeping up with the engineer, and the attendant hurriedly flicking through the warehouse tablet. “I don’t have a visit scheduled, you aren’t allowed to just come in and take what you want!”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I can do.” Carmilla turned a corner. “I work on Hermes. And our shitty supply stock means that I get to come here, raid your stock, and all you can do is smile, say thank you, and wish me a good day.”

“I-I-” The attendant looked lost for words as he stopped in place, not used to someone dismissing him with such ease.

Carmilla found the section she was looking for. Trust Zeus to never rearrange their supply sections, that combined with her photographic memory meant that she hadn’t needed to consult the attendant at all. The fact that they’d gotten some new person who was unaware of how things worked was a pain in the ass, but Carmilla had gotten fairly good at ignoring pains in her ass.

Her head poked around the corner, to where Laura was comforting the attendant and his hurt feelings. “What’s the code, newbie?”

His shoulders sagged as he replied, “Four seven three eight.”

She put the code into the keypad at the end of the wall of shelving and the shelves started to move, cycling down so that the right shelf was now at chest height to Carmilla. The plastic covering slid back and she picked up the part, pocketing it before locking the shelf again.

When she walked past Laura and the attendant, she threw him a sarcastic smile. “Thank you for _all_ your help.”

Carmilla navigated her way through the stock aisles, not looking at the parts as she passed them. She didn’t need to know everything she was missing, she preferred to work with as little as possible. It made her smart, it sharpened her skills, it forced her to be excellent. Being here would just make her soft.

That’s what she told herself anyway.

Carmilla was climbing the stairs to the exit landing by the time Laura caught up to her. “You didn’t have to be so mean, you know.”

“Did I hurt his feelings?” Carmilla asked with an exaggerated pout.

“Some people have emotions, Karnstein,” Laura snapped, “and that’s not something for them to be ashamed of, and it’s not something that you get to make them feel bad for having.” She pushed past Carmilla to exit through the door first, leaving Carmilla on the landing.

Carmilla couldn’t will herself to move for a moment, frozen by a feeling that she didn’t want to examine. Her eyes dropped to the warehouse floor, where the stock room attendant was returning to his post. Shaking herself out of the moment, she shoved her way roughly through the door.

\---

With no Perry to accommodate for Carmilla’s eating preferences, Carmilla had to take dinner at Zeus with the rest of the base. Thankfully, the huge amount of people in Zeus meant that dinner was staggered, so Carmilla slipped into one of the later sessions that were less busy.

She’d lost track of Laura after she’d stormed out of the stock room, although that was probably because she hadn’t looked. Even brushing past the memory of being told off by the scientist left Carmilla feeling an uncomfortable mix of anger and shame, so Carmilla chose to ignore it. She was good at that.

She collected a tray from the kitchen slot, the menu on the wall said ‘sautéed vegetables, steak, and Jell-O’ but it just looked like mush, mush and a cup of lime green jelly. She had to credit Perry, her food looked like food.

Taking a seat at one of the empty tables in the corner, she started to pick through the mush, looking for something resembling a lump, which could trick her into thinking she was eating actual food.

A person sat across from her, and she rolled her eyes at her tray, ignoring their presence until a gently even voice said, “Carmilla.”

Her stomach sank.

“It’s nice to see you again.”

“What’s up, Doc?” she replied, finally putting aside her fork and looking up. Her voice was heavy with irony, as was the tight smile she offered.

Dr Cochrane gave an even smile that matched her voice. Her blonde hair was cropped short now, with a long fringe that swept down across her forehead and tucked behind her ear. It was a surprisingly severe looking haircut, for a woman who acted as if her personality was a bubble wrap for others. Wrinkles lined her face, not hidden by makeup, but instead displayed with confidence as if they were badges of honour for her.

“I’m very well thank you, Carmilla, how are you?”

“Great,” Carmilla replied through gritted teeth. There was something about the softness of this woman that made Carmilla harder. She didn’t trust it; _no_ one was that soft without something hidden beneath the surface.

“Have you invented anything new?” The question was posed lightly, and the way that it almost sounded like small talk made Carmilla’s hackles rise.

“No.”

“That’s a shame.”

Dr Cochrane’s blue eyes were fixed on hers, and they said what she never would - _liar, liar, liar_.

Another plastic tray clattered onto the table in between them, and Carmilla felt an unspeakable relief that Laura had chosen this moment to appear. At least, until Laura started to speak.

“And another thing!” Laura exclaimed, as if they hadn’t finished their last conversation. “You go around with this whole ‘big bad’ persona thing but we both know it’s just a façade!” It was only after she’d blown up that she seemed to realise Dr Cochrane’s presence, and all of the fury crumbled from Laura’s face as she turned bright red. “Oh, oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to...” She sat in her seat with a meek grimace. “I’m Laura, I’m from Athena.”

Dr Cochrane just seemed entertained by the whole thing (which, of course she was) and she clasped Laura’s hand for a firm handshake. “Dr Cochrane.”

“Oh!” Laura perked up immediately, previous embarrassment forgotten. “What are you a doctor in?”

Doctors were a dime a dozen in the Mars colony, especially Athena, but the genuine interest from Laura made it seem like a rarity.

“I’m a psychiatrist,” Dr Cochrane answered.

Laura’s eyes flicked over to Carmilla for the shortest of moments, but to the engineer it felt like a lifetime. It was a floodlight aimed squarely at something she had done her best to ignore.

She stood suddenly, sending the chair skittering back on the floor with a loud scrape, and walked out of the cafeteria.

\---

_Three years ago_

Carmilla watched the second hand on the analogue clock tick up. It was the only analogue clock she’d seen on Mars. She wondered if that had some significance.

“I’m not the enemy, Carmilla,” Dr Cochrane said, gently trying to push her into revealing more. “I need to clear you before you can return to duty, I’m trying to work with you, not against you.” Then, she asked the question that she’d asked in every session, “Why were you in that storm?”

Carmilla counted each second as it ticked by. “I told you.”

Dr Cochrane didn’t falter. “You’re an engineer. You’ve been on Mars for four years. You don’t get accidentally caught in storms.”

“Accidents happen,” Carmilla parroted back to her. Her eyes finally dropped to Dr Cochrane, an empty laziness threaded through her expression.

Dr Cochrane studied her for a long minute.

“Is that your last answer?”

Carmilla didn’t need to reply verbally to convey her response.

“Very well.” Dr Cochrane’s face fell with disappointment as she started to touch the screen of her desktop computer, filling out the necessary paperwork. “I’m clearing you, but Carmilla-”

Carmilla was already halfway to the door, but she paused at her name, although she didn’t turn.

“You can contact me any time, my door is always open. Physically, or technologically.”

She left.

\---

Even though the outside of Zeus was wrapped in a protective sheet, the ceiling on the inside was a tough plastic polymer. The sheet was designed to shield the base from the worst of the weather, while the plastic provided a secure housing. A little known fact was that there was a maintenance area between the two, so that the sheet could be checked over and fixed easily from underneath. Even lesser known was that if you were at the summit of the structure, you would be able to see the sky above through a small transparent window in the sheet.

Carmilla was there now, lying down in her space suit and staring at the sky that had brought her to this planet. She had always considered the stars to be renewing, they let her escape from whatever reality she’d trapped herself in, but they weren’t doing their job as usual tonight.

A few metres away, the panel slid open, projecting a stream of artificial light onto the oversheet that, up close, was closer to purple than white.

A space helmet popped up through the hatch, the person inside looking around until they turned to Carmilla and she saw Laura’s face through the visor.

Relief swept Laura’s face as she fully climbed out of the hatch and gingerly walked over to Carmilla before dropping to her knees next to her. She used a gloved finger to start inputting things into her stats monitor, and then looked at Carmilla expectantly.

Carmilla’s stats monitor beeped and she looked down at it.

Communication Request: Dr Laura Hollis

Accept     Decline

Carmilla made a small sound of annoyance in the back of her throat and she accepted the request.

“You know, there’s nothing embarrassing about therapy.”

“Okay, that’s...” Carmilla went to get up, annoyed with herself for even accepting the request, because how had she expected something different?

“My mom was in the first phase,” Laura said and Carmilla stilled. Slowly, she turned to the other girl, searching her face to see if she was being honest. Deciding that no lie could ever bring someone the amount of sadness that now lay bare in Laura’s eyes, Carmilla waited for her to continue.

“Base Hera,” Laura’s voice cracked, but she didn’t seem to notice. “She was one of the people that, uh, that stayed in the control room.”

There was a reason why Zeus was mostly underground, and Athena was carved into dense rock formations.

Hera was the reason.

Base Hera had been the first, the start of the Mars colonisation, and the biggest tragedy since. Loose piping and a week of rough storms had compromised the base, depressurizing the building. The only reason there had been survivors were two people who remained in the depressurized control room in space suits and salvaged all the airlocks while the others were safely in the underground room.

Carmilla didn’t know what to say, so instead she just sat up and gave Laura her silent attention.

“My dad was so against me coming here.” Laura let out a soft huff, painting a momentary fog over the bottom of her visor. “He disowned me while I was doing the program. He didn’t talk to me until after I graduated, when I’d gotten my deployment date.” She shook her head slightly before adding quickly, “We talk every week now. He’s okay. Mostly.

“When we lose people, it does things to us,” Laura said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “It made me want to come to Mars, to study it, to make sure that something like Hera never happened again. It made my dad sure that he’d never come.” Her gaze locked with Carmilla’s, and Carmilla expected some sort of prying into her past to come from the scientist, but instead she said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you before. Sometimes I forget.”

“Forget what?” Carmilla asked, barely above a whisper.

“Everyone here’s lost something.”

Carmilla knew what oxygen starvation felt like, she was intimately familiar with the pain and the choking bitter that came with it. The way that Laura’s words made her feel was the first thing that had come close to it, but for some reason instead of panicking her, it steadied her.

Laura stared above them, through the lens of the plastic, into the stars that they’d crossed to get here. “It’s beautiful.”

Carmilla joined Laura’s gaze, to the clear, full sky that signified where they had come from, and how much further they had to go. “Is it?”

Laura’s eyes slid down to Carmilla, her expression unreadable. The reflection of the stars blanketed her visor, superimposed over Laura’s face, creating ghosts of constellations in her eyes and through her hair.

Although Laura didn’t say anything, Carmilla suddenly knew - it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Booom, I hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Ngl, there are a bunch of ideas I had to cut down for it because I didn't have the time to go into them, and I didn't expect it to go on for this long, but oh well. I am considering continuing it though, so let me know what you think?
> 
> Come chill with me at my tumblr [churchofyourcurves](churchofyourcurves.tumblr.com) if you like :) We can talk further about awesome space adventurer girlfriends.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank you guys for all your support with the first part. I know this one took a little while, things at work have been incredibly hectic lately, but here is the second part.
> 
> Enjoy!

_Seven years ago_

Carmilla pulled the tree from her memory with surprising ease, each stroke uncovering it from her mind’s eye until it dominated the left half of the digital painting on her tablet. She didn’t know what species it was, but she did remember every ridge, every knot, every root that snaked its way from the thick trunk. There was the scar from the old tyre swing her dad hung in the summer she was 8, the place she carved out the initials of her first crush, the hollow where she’d hide what she didn’t want her parents to see.

“That’s beautiful.”

Carmilla tensed, suddenly aware that there was someone standing behind her, and she pulled the tablet screen tight to her chest.

“Sorry,” the person apologised, although she didn’t sound it, her voice still carrying the light tug of intrigue. She rounded Carmilla’s chair, taking a seat on the arm of the sofa chair opposite. Carmilla didn’t recognise the woman, even though she was giving her a warm smile as if they were friends.

The girl was pretty. Well, she was gorgeous. She had curling platinum-blonde hair that framed her face, her nose long and ever so slightly hooked at the tip in a way that made her clearly European. Her eyes were shockingly green, so pale that in some light they were sure to go grey, and there was a mole just under her right eye.

So, she was stunning, but Carmilla wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate stunning. She was in the one place in this entire spacecraft that was meant to be _hers_ , an alcove hidden away behind a bulkhead at the end of the ship. She’d even gone to the effort of carrying two cushy armchairs here while everyone else was asleep. Having this stunning woman interrupt her drawing time threw her way off balance, regardless of how wide her smile was.

The woman nodded at the tablet. “Is that a real place?”

Carmilla frowned, not following the line of questioning for a moment, until she realised and stared at the other woman. She’d never met someone so blunt before, someone who actually questioned past Carmilla’s stern face, and she blamed that for the fact that the answer spilled from her lips. “It was my backyard, growing up.”

“It’s gorgeous,” the woman stated, both encouraging and matter of fact. “When did you move?”

Carmilla’s eyes shifted just so and the woman added, “You said growing up.” Her green eyes seemed to cut through Carmilla, sharp with intelligence and discerning in a way that Carmilla had never experienced. At least, not when she was so caught off guard.

“I was 12,” Carmilla replied, and it must have been blunt enough because it stopped the woman from questioning further.

“You’re really good.” Coming from anyone else Carmilla would have considered it patronising, from this woman it felt oddly genuine. The stranger pushed forward again, this time on a different topic. “What do you do?”

“Engineer.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Qualified?”

Carmilla scoffed. “Student. I’m part of the graduate program.”

“Me too!”

Carmilla took in the woman’s immaculate manicure dubiously. “You’re an engineer?”

The woman blushed, the first time that Carmilla had caught her out. “Chemist.”

“Figures.”

The woman seemed entertained by Carmilla’s response instead of insulted, and she considered Carmilla with a half-smile. “Let me buy you a drink.”

Carmilla’s eyes narrowed. “The drinks are comped.”

Without skipping a beat, the stranger said, “Well then, let me get you a free drink.”

Carmilla weighed the offer in her head for a moment, searching the woman’s face. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but whatever it was, she ended up nodding stiffly.

The woman’s smile grew. “I’m Ell.”

“Carmilla.”

\---

Carmilla walked into the Zeus visitor’s bunk that she was sharing with Laura to find her sitting cross-legged on the mattress, completely engrossed in her tablet. After what had happened in the maintenance area, an awkward tension hung between them. The vulnerability they’d shared left them both unaware of how to act around each other; the dynamic shift seemed to change the rules but in a way that neither of them had figured out yet.

Basically, it felt like they’d had a one-night stand. Except, instead of intimate memories turned crude and uncomfortable in the light of the morning, Laura’s honesty regarding her mother lined each of their interactions. It weighed down every look and word, and neither of them was willing to shoulder the extra weight. They were already carrying enough.

“You ready?” Carmilla asked, and even those two words felt like she had left herself vulnerable.

Laura looked up from the tablet and Carmilla saw her expression shift, from blank, to a hard wall. “Yeah, I-” They shared a held breath, until the sentence that Laura had been about to say slid back with a quiet, “Yeah.”

Carmilla nodded. “Let’s go.”

Laura unfolded her legs from under her, letting them dangle over the edge of the mattress, although her toes barely skimmed the floor. She was wearing grey tights that ended halfway down her calf, and even through the material it was obvious that she took care of herself. Unlike Carmilla’s muscles, carved crudely through years of physical labour, Laura’s looked like they had been chiselled away with great care, woven around her slight frame for aesthetics rather than requirement.

All scientists were the same, Carmilla thought as she turned away from her with a bitter tang in the back of her throat. “I’ll meet you at the Rover.” She grabbed her duffel bag off the bed, shouldered it and headed up to the entrance bay.

Mel was waiting for her when she got there.

“Leaving already?”

“There are too many people here.”

“I hear that.”

Carmilla shifted her weight from one foot to the other; the weirdness between her and the scientist had somehow polluted her ability to talk to people, so that she was holding her tongue with someone that she’d never had to before. She reached forward and bumped her fist against Mel’s shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”

She started towards the Rover when Mel asked, “Hey, are you alright?”

Carmilla paused, looking over her shoulder at the door tech. Suddenly, the memory of the same person asking the same question felt like it was side by side with this moment. Mel, younger, without an invisible weight drawing deep black bags under her eyes, asking Carmilla if she was okay but really meaning ‘are you ready’.

The duffel strap cut into Carmilla’s shoulder, and she shifted her thumb under it, trying to take some of the pressure off her skin.

Before Carmilla could answer, not that she knew what to answer, Laura burst through the double doors, juggling her bag, tablet, and a breakfast roll. Where Laura had gotten the food from was a mystery, but it made Carmilla scowl as her stomach twisted.

“Peachy keen,” she answered Mel, the reply that had seemed so daunting now slipped free as an easy lie as she headed to the Rover.

She threw her bag into the Rover before climbing in, booting up the system and waiting for the engine to warm up. She didn’t have to wait very long, Zeus charging stations always had a bit more juice in them. The protective sheeting wasn’t just there for protection, it was also woven with nanowiring that let it capture the power of the sun’s rays and turn them into energy.

Carmilla busied herself with the control panel, scanning the environmental monitor for the path they’d be taking. The whole sector was clear, barring a small smudge of a storm right in the corner that barely registered on the radar.

A notification popped up on the screen, over the satellite shot of Mars.

Message: Melanippe Callis

Stay safe. And stay in touch, asshole.

Carmilla smiled at the screen, glancing in the rear view mirror to see Mel at her console, sticking her middle finger up in her direction. A dry laugh escaped Carmilla, but just as soon as it appeared, it left when Laura’s voice came from above, “Hi, can I-?”

Carmilla wordlessly shifted to the side, so that Laura could clumsily drop into the interior of the Rover, her bag hitting the edge of the control panel and tumbling to the ground. Carmilla sighed as she threw the bag behind their seats. Laura followed the bag, her limbs somehow making a huge mess despite their small size.

The engineer gritted her teeth against her irritation, and started to seal the Rover’s interior.

\---

“Do you mind if I record a log?”

Carmilla’s heart jumped at the sound of Laura’s voice breaking the silence of the past hour, and she prayed that it wasn’t obvious that she’d been startled. Her hands twisted around the steering wheel, tugging at the skin of her palm, and she forced the sparks of adrenaline in her muscles to relax.

She shrugged a response. She could feel her anxiety like a blanket of static, layered through her insides, and she couldn’t tell yet if it was a false alarm or a gut instinct. She’d learned to trust her instincts on Mars, more so than on Earth, but today hadn’t been a good day for her.

Laura cleared her throat, holding her tablet so that the camera was pointed square at her face. “Good morning, gentle viewers...”

Who the ‘gentle viewers’ were stumped Carmilla, but not enough to draw a sarcastic reply out of her.

“So the last I left you, I was stuck at Base Hermes as I waited for repairs to our Rover. Now, I present to you-”

Laura looked around the Rover, before settling for hammering out a drumroll on the window next to her with one palm. Then, with a showy wave of her hand, she announced, “Thermopylae Mons!” She paused and then said sheepishly, “Well, not like _here_ , but we’ll drive past it and I’ll totally get some footage of it later.”

Laura glanced over at Carmilla hopefully, and something about having the space between them filled with Laura talking - even if she wasn’t talking to her - seemed to melt away enough of Carmilla’s tension that she managed a stiff nod.

The scientist grinned broadly and Carmilla tried not to notice.

Laura continued, not noticing Carmilla not noticing, “There isn’t a lot written about Thermopylae Mons, it was probably scouted when there was less research into Mars rock formations and no one ever went back.” Laura shrugged. “But the way that it’s been eroded suggests something under the surface, although the striations aren’t as visible higher up, which could mean...”

As Laura continued to think out loud in great detail about Thermopylae Mons, Carmilla tuned out the details of her words and kept cadence of Laura’s voice as background noise instead, a soundtrack to the drive back to Hermes.

\---

A few small rocks rolled along the ground lazily, spiralling in the wind that swept past Laura as she stretched out her muscles. She was standing with her legs apart, her top half bent over so that her left hand touched her left foot, and her other arm was straight up in the air. Carmilla was lying down on the roof of the Rover, arms behind her head and her eyes closed.

“Have you ever been caught in a storm?”

Carmilla’s eyes snapped open, and she had to take stock of the white sky above, anchoring herself to the hues of yellow that lined the horizons around her. There was no storm, she was fine.

“Why?”

“Curiosity,” Laura replied simply, as if she hadn’t just asked a question that had split Carmilla open under the Mars sky.

The engineer would never admit it, but she considered answering the question. For the briefest of moments, she actually thought about forming a reply, but the ripple effect that the thought sent through her had her recoiling. “We should go.”

She dropped back into the Rover and busied herself with checking the environmental monitor while she waited for Laura. When the screen loaded her mouth went dry, and the warning buzz became a chilling scream.

“Hollis.”

“Yeah?”

“Get in now.” In any other context the words would have been harsh, but in this one they just came out scared and weak. Carmilla didn’t even have the energy to care, it felt like she was suddenly disconnected from her body; her limbs were loose, bloodless, and when Laura got into the Rover she had to take her body carefully through every step of sealing the cabin - a process that had long turned into a reflex for her.

Once the Rover was sealed, Laura took off her helmet. “What’s wrong?”

Carmilla slammed the Rover into gear and pointed at the screen where a dark swirl had appeared in the north. It was still a few hours away, but if it continued in the direction it was travelling, it would cut across their path before they could reach Hermes.

It was clear that Laura didn’t know the subtleties of reading storms from the way her eyes flicked from the screen and Carmilla’s face, but from the engineer’s expression she could glean what the storm front sweeping the top of the screen meant.

\---

The sound reached them before the storm did.

Storms on Mars were unlike anything on Earth. Most of the time, the colonists could trick themselves into thinking they were in a remote part of Earth, some desert where the atmosphere had been compromised and taken away the molecules in the air that turned the sky blue. When a storm hit, it was impossible.

The first thing that would happen was the dust. Small, electrostatic particles that stuck to absolutely everything. Then, the storm would pass over, and the air would crackle with electricity. It would start slowly, electricity striking the floor in places, until it built to the level that it would travel through the dust, across the surface of the planet, and whatever else had been coated in it.

It was the reasoning for the metal framework at Zeus; it drew all of the electricity and redirected it to pass harmlessly through the ground, protecting the base underneath. All the Rovers had been built with protected systems - but the systems weren’t infallible, especially with how thorough the dust was.

Carmilla knew this from personal experience.

The storm in the distance crackled and exploded, so loud that it felt like a physical shock wave reverberating across the surface of the planet. The sky above them was already darkening, full of the dust that would soon descend and turn everything into a giant electricity conductor.

“How far from Hermes are we?” Laura asked, not able to move her eyes from the storm that the screen clocked as ten kilometres away.

“Too far,” Carmilla replied through gritted teeth. The storm would get to them in fifteen minutes, they were thirty minutes from the base, they were five minutes from the mouth of the valley in the mountain range. “Thermopylae Mons.”

“What about it?”

“You said there might be a cave system.”

“The striations are what you’d expect from-”

“Express version, Hollis,” Carmilla interrupted. Her eyes flicked down to the screen, tracking the storm.

“Probably,” Laura replied.

“Can you find one of the entrances?”

“Maybe.”

“You have ten minutes to find me one within range.”

Laura scrambled to grab her tablet, cross-referencing her findings along with satellite imagery to try and find the closest cave entrance.

Carmilla let herself sneak a glance at the storm, and the flash of light from it made her eyes ache.

\---

_Three years ago_

Commander Lawrence rounded the table at the centre of the foyer to try and cut Carmilla off before she could reach the entrance airlock. “You’re not going out there.”

Carmilla delivered the Commander her most scathing look, which was quite a feat considering she was a head taller than her. “I know you’ve been stuck in this backwater little faux-base for a while, _Commander_ ,” Carmilla spat out the title with disdain, “but a 15% chance of storm isn’t going to stop me getting the part that we need so our oxygenator doesn’t break.”

Carmilla adopted a patronising explanatory tone as she continued, “You see, we, as humans, need oxygen to breathe, and for some reason, we’ve decided to colonise a planet that is chock-full of poisonous carbon dioxide, so, oxygenators are fairly important to breathing.” Carmilla leaned forward, as if divulging a secret. “Which, by the way, is important to living.”

Commander Lawrence’s jaw twitched at the engineer’s behaviour, but her eyes didn’t give an inch.

They stared each other down, until Carmilla let out a disgusted sound and stormed off to the Mechanics wing. When she got in there, she grabbed the can of tools and threw it clear across the room, sending a slew of wrenches and spanners flying. Behind her the door closed and she glanced over her shoulder to see the Commander walking away, shaking her head.

Carmilla stalked over to the counter, and picked up a tablet with a partially cracked screen, swiping through the options and inputting some code so that she had access to the surveillance cameras. Flicking through the different cameras, she found the cafeteria one, which showed the Commander sitting down to dinner.

Now, all she had to do was wait.

\---

“Got one!” Laura exclaimed, leaning forward to tap the coordinates into the Rover’s screen. The entrance was in the direction of the storm - which was now 8 minutes away, and so loud that the planet felt like it was cracking open. Carmilla’s heart pounded non-stop, hard enough that she could taste it as copper again and again and again. They’d lose half a minute getting to the entrance, but Carmilla swung the steering wheel of the Rover towards it anyway.

Nothing felt real anymore, not the Rover, not the storm, not the planet. The dust was thicker now, a storm of particles that reminded Carmilla of driving in the rain except instead of rain it was dust. Dust, dust and more dust, because this entire planet was dust. (She was riding a wave of adrenaline through to her demise. God, _God_ , how was she here again?)

Something moved over her head and she jerked away before realising that it was Laura, putting her helmet on for her. Because Laura was here. (Carmilla might be here again, but this time she wasn’t alone.)

With the helmet on, everything felt even more unreal, and she watched the Rover dot close in on the pinned location, as did the huge storm front.

“There it is!”

Carmilla became dimly aware that Laura must have patched them into the same comms line as well, but she didn’t know when. Suddenly realising that she was _driving_ , she forced herself to stay grounded. She had to drive, she had to hold on for just a little longer.

She spotted the cave opening, a slim gap in the rock face, two metres off the ground. She spun the wheel and pulled up the handbrake of the Rover, so that its wheels locked and the back of it fishtailed along the ground. The Rover skidded to the side with a loud squeal until it collided with the rock face. It wasn’t hard enough to damage the Rover, but it did make the cabin rock back and forth on the wheels.

Carmilla depressurized the cabin, taking herself through every step in her mind. When the hatch opened Laura said, “You go first.”

Unable to protest, Carmilla looked up at the hatch - _right hand up, grab the handle, pull up_ \- and pulled herself through into the outside world. The dust had frozen in the air, suddenly still, and Carmilla remembered this. ( _Fuck_ , she remembered it.)

Then Laura was next to her, pulling her into the cave entrance.

\---

_Six years ago_

The Mars environmental tutor walked in front of the huge window, gesturing to the storm that played out in front of them. “We’ve learned a lot about the storms since the first phase.” She took in the scared faces of the class in front of her and smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. Athena’s glass not only protects against the electricity, but also radiation, and can resist a ten megaton force.”

One of the many rooms built into the rock face, the window in front of them stretched up six metres high and curved around, so that it was more than just a wall, it provided an almost 180 degree view of the planet in front of them. The other walls were left as the rock of the planet, although it had been sanded back smooth and bare, and was laced with framework that kept it stable. During storms no one went near the framework; if they did, the static electricity would cause their hair to stand on end.

Carmilla didn’t pay much attention to what the tutor was saying, she already knew all of this, but the storm was definitely different. It hadn’t reached them yet, but it was close enough to see that the electricity that ripped its way through the dust had flickers of other colours through it, blues and greens that crackled at the edges.

“It’s crazy, right?” Ell asked next to her, watching the storm with wonder and delight.

“It’s something,” Carmilla agreed vaguely.

“Oh come on,” Ell scoffed, “you can’t be all no reaction, woman of mystery, to _that_.”

Carmilla glanced over at Ell, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips. “Woman of mystery?”

Ell rolled her eyes. “You know what you are.”

One of the other students stuck their hand in the air. “What would happen if one of us was caught out in the storm?”

Carmilla snorted derisively at the question, drawing a stern look from the tutor. She didn’t react to the look, just letting her face fall into a bored expression as her eyes slid back to the approaching storm.

“If you got caught in the storm,” the tutor started, considering what way to put it.

“You’d die,” Carmilla finished, not raising her voice, but loud enough that the person who’d asked the question heard it and their ears went bright pink.

The tutor fixed another, stronger, look on Carmilla. “I don’t recall asking for your input, Miss Karnstein.” She sighed, knowing her admonishment wouldn’t land on the engineering student. “If you were outside during a storm, your chances would be slim. But you _would_ have chances, if you managed to find shelter and could create an insulation barrier against the electricity. As you know, a space suit’s oxygenator doesn’t work with all the charge in the air-”

A shot of lightning rippled across the outside of the glass, sending out a blinding spider web of white, blue and green, and making the class gasp.

The tutor, clearly proud of the reaction that the storm had elicited, beamed at the class and waited for the impressed murmurs and relieved laughter to die down before continuing, “You would be running on your emergency air supply, so as long as the storm passed, or you found your way back to a base before it ran out, then you’d be okay.”

“How long does it take a storm to pass?” Ell asked, and Carmilla was surprised that she didn’t know the answer already. Ell was usually the person Carmilla would go to when she needed a random fact about the red planet.

“On average,” the tutor spoke slowly, “three days.”

“And the emergency air supply lasts for?”

Ell’s point came into focus very suddenly, so much so that Carmilla was stunned by the way she’d made it.

The tutor met Ell’s question with a perfectly even expression. “48 hours.”

\---

Carmilla watched the particles of dust float through the air. The lights at the bottom of her helmet had turned on automatically in the dark of the cave, and if she looked anywhere lower than eye level it made spots appear in her vision. Outside the storm raged, outside it was a completely different world.

In here, it was rock, rock, rock.

Laura had propped her against a wall, and instead of watching the scientist clamber around the cave, she decided to watch the dust. It was still charged, even if the lightning didn’t make it in here. The scientist must have blocked off the entrance, but Carmilla couldn’t remember it happening.

She didn’t remember a lot right now.

She held up her gloved hand, watching it move through the air and send the floating dust spiralling, a small spark of static electricity snapping against the outside of her suit.

How was she here again?

She laughed; a sharp, short bark of a laugh, and it drew the scientist’s attention.

“Are you okay?” Laura asked, and there was something in the careful way she asked it that made Carmilla bark another, rougher laugh, which probably didn’t sound like a laugh to anyone except for her.

“I’m great.” Carmilla shrugged, a loose, lazy smile on her face. “Absolutely amazing.”

“Okay.” Laura came over to her, abandoning her tablet for a moment to examine Carmilla. “Are you losing it?”

Carmilla didn’t dignify that question with an answer.

Instead, she said, “I should have left three years ago.” She let the back of her helmet hit the wall, and the jolt when it made contact felt like the whole world had shuddered. Or was that from outside? “They kept asking me if I wanted to. But the timing... It would have been like running.”

“From Ell.”

Carmilla hummed, staring up at the shadows that the helmet lights cast across the uneven ceiling.

“I’m sorry I made us take a break,” Laura spoke as if the words hurt as they left her, and Carmilla felt the urge to gather this small, small girl into her arms. She thought of the foster home. She thought of how Mattie would hum lullabies into her hair that she didn’t recognise, when she was 17 and too old for them. She thought of William, and the spindly legs that he’d use to run to Mother, to tell her about the secrets that were meant to be kept secrets.

She reached out and pressed the palm of her glove to Laura’s visor. It felt odd to be touching something so artificial. (Everything on this world was artificial, everything except for the dust.)

“Mother would have hated you.”

Laura looked confused by that, but Carmilla didn’t have the energy to explain. She suddenly felt very, very tired.

She didn’t want to be here anymore.

\---

Carmilla woke up gasping, yanked out of a nightmare that felt like tar.

Where was she?

All she could see was dust.

Outside?

She moved her arm, dislodging the layer of dust that covered it. She was wearing her suit. Her hand hit something and she gripped onto it. It wasn’t soil, it was... A steering wheel?

She lifted both her hands to her visor, sweeping away the layer of dust that had covered it. She was inside the Rover, the hatch was closed but the interior was full of dust. Outside was still a dust storm.

The Rover was moving forward slowly, but not in the way that had to do with the Rover’s engine, or with the storm around them. It was more stilted, with a regular rhythm, as if-

_Shit_.

“Hollis?”

There was a solid moment of silence that greeted her before Laura’s voice came over the comms. “Carm! You’re awake.” The scientist sounded genuinely surprised, and Carmilla scowled.

“What are you doing? Are you pulling the Rover? You’re not protected out there.” Carmilla tried to squint through the windows, wiping the dust from the inside of the window, but the outside remained a blur. She could see what might be a figure in the dust, but it could also be her eyes tricking her.

“Most of the electricity’s passed now, I-”

“5 degrees to the right,” a robotic voice came over the comms system, interrupting Laura.

Carmilla frowned. “What was that?”

“I spliced the Rover’s MNav into the comms system.”

“Right.” She was impressed, although her tone didn’t convey it. She looked behind the Rover’s chairs, sweeping aside the dust that covered the storage trunk. It looked like the scientist had already raided it, but there was still one cinch strap left, secured under the lid of the trunk. She unhooked it from the lid, starting to secure it around herself as she opened up the hatch. The Rover’s electronics were all dead, the dust that had gotten inside must have killed the system, but thankfully the hatch could be manually opened and closed. A fresh bout of dust swept into the Rover, covering everything instantly.

“I’m coming out to help.”

Carmilla pulled herself up into the world, into the dust, and even though she was wearing a helmet she felt the air had been knocked out of her lungs by the thick canvas of dust around them.

“No, I’m fine!” Laura protested, and there was something else to her voice. Something...

_Shit_ , Carmilla realised that it hadn’t been a dream, at least not all of it. The cave had been real. “How much air do we have left?”

“I have three hours. You have a bit more, because you were out.”

Three hours. That meant that they’d been relying on their oxygen tanks for 45 hours. How much of that had Laura spent awake, what thoughts had been running through her mind?

“How far away are we at the pace you’re setting?”

Laura paused for a long time, but the Rover continued to move forward. “Three hours.”

There was a very real chance that the scientist was lying, to try and keep Carmilla inside the Rover instead of coming out and possibly becoming more of a hindrance than a help. Carmilla took a slow, steady breath in and out as she looked around the dust and measured her mind’s response.

“I’m fine, Laura. I can do this.”

For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Then, the Rover rolled to a slow stop and the figure that might have been Laura started to get closer, clearer. It was still impossible to see her face, or suit, but her silhouette stopped by the front of the Rover. “Let’s hook you up.”

Carmilla dropped to the ground and from this close she could see the sheet Laura had wrapped around herself to protect from the electricity. It was the equivalent of an umbrella against a hurricane, but it was more than Carmilla had managed last time.

They made quick work of securing the cinch rope to the front of the Rover. Laura grabbed Carmilla’s hand, and handed her an edge of the sheet so that it was covering both of them, and they waded forward into the dust together.

Even in the fiercest of storms, the wind on Mars wasn’t very strong. The low gravity meant that the most extreme wind was a stiff breeze. But that was still enough to make the insulation sheet a pain, catching underneath it and yanking it up or shoving it down on them, on top of the fact that gripping onto it through the gloves meant they couldn’t feel if they were still holding it, and they couldn’t visually check because their visors were coated in dust. So it was entirely possible that they were holding their fists closed over nothing, feeling the movements of a phantom sheet.

They worked side by side without saying a word, the sounds of their breathing feeding into each other’s helmets through the comms system. Even though the larger electricity shocks had passed, the dust particles still stuck to every single surface they could and it made Carmilla claustrophobic in her helmet. It felt like being trapped, with only a few inches between her face and an ochre wall. To combat the claustrophobia, she closed her eyes and continued to move forward, using her feet to feel her way through the space in front of her.

It was all so very familiar, except for one thing - Laura’s hand.

She didn’t feel her hand in the traditional sense, not through all the glove’s layers, but she felt the pressure. Laura was gripping back just as hard as she was, and it felt stable.

A soft melody drifted into her mind, so gently and quietly that she was sure she was imagining it. Then she realised that it wasn’t in her mind, it was coming from her helmet speakers. The melody was uneven, with each step forward it would jolt just a little louder, before lapsing back into a quiet hum that Carmilla felt in her jaw.

“What song is that?”

The melody stuttered to a halt, and Carmilla wondered if Laura was even conscious that she had been humming.

“It was something my mom used to...” It seemed this was as far as her words would take her.

Carmilla felt her face soften, and she wanted to help Laura somehow but didn’t know how, so she just squeezed the scientist’s hand.

After a moment of breathing silence, the words came to her and Carmilla said in a hoarse voice, “You can keep going.”

With her eyes closed and her feet treading a path that she couldn’t see, Carmilla focused on Laura’s humming. In her mind, the sound appeared as a red thread drifting across the back of her eyelids, and pulling her home.

\---

They made it back to the base with an hour to spare.

By the time the MNav politely informed them that they had arrived at their destination, Laura had been in the middle of belting out a musical number - and the slightly out of breath rendition and occasional jerky hand tug had Carmilla sure she was dancing at the same time.

Carmilla was unsure if she was concerned or charmed by the scientist. She couldn’t tell if Laura’s gusto was genuine or not, but it seemed to keep both their minds off the storm, so did it really matter?

“How do we get in?” Laura asked.

Carmilla undid the cinch rope from around her waist, then undid Laura’s, so that the Rover was left where it was, and pulled her in the direction of the side door. Working at the small base for three years had left her with the layout burned into her memory. She reached out, expecting to feel the wall in front of her, and when there was nothing there she panicked internally.

But then, she inched forward and her fingers bumped against the wall. Relief flooded her system as she continued to feel the wall with her left hand, holding onto Laura with her right, until she went around the corner and reached the side door.

The edges of the door were easy to feel out, even with the gloves on, and she closed her hand into a fist to hammer at the door. As hard as she could, she bashed out the rhythm of the song that Kirsch would always whistle while he worked.

Carmilla got to the chorus before the door slid open under her fist, and she stumbled into the air lock, pulling Laura in beside her. She tripped on the lip of the airlock doorframe on the way in, more out of exhaustion than forgetting it was there, and she stumbled to her knees with bones of jelly.

When the door closed behind them the section started to pressurize, the air blowing down on them hard and clearing off the layer of dust, but it took Laura's hand on her shoulder for Carmilla to open her eyes for the first time in two hours.

She only had time to stare at the floor for a few seconds before the door to the base opened and someone ran in, grabbing Carmilla off the floor and into a fierce hug. She hadn’t been able to see who it was, but given that she was currently hovering off the floor, she was fairly sure it was Kirsch.

When he finally let her down, she saw his face, sunken with lack of sleep and worry. He started to talk, muffled sounds that she couldn’t make out properly through the helmet. She took it off, letting her finally breathe in air that wasn’t from the suit’s emergency tank.

“...and Commander Lawrence thought I was going insane, but I told her, that’s definitely ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’, so I opened the airlock, and-”

Carmilla let the helmet drop to the floor, her muscles suddenly too fatigued to hold it anymore. “Calm down, Lurch.” She held her hand up, making Kirsch lapse into silence, although he continued to vibrate in place with anticipation.

Perry, Commander Lawrence and the other redhead scientist peered around the open entrance, and Carmilla wondered if Kirsch had felt outnumbered among the redheads.

“Karnstein,” the Commander said, her heels clicking together as her hands gripped tight behind her back, and her shoulders squared off. Lawrence met her eyes unflinchingly, the relief clear in them just as it was in Carmilla’s.

“Commander.”

Perry was nowhere near as contained. Instead, she thrust herself into the airlock bay and hugged Carmilla - quickly but tightly - and when she pulled back her eyes diverted apologetically. Carmilla had no idea how to respond to it, which was good because Perry didn’t seem to know either as she took several quick steps back to the doorway.

Next to her, Laura and the other scientist were hugging and talking very quickly about things. Way too many words were flying back and forth between them right now, and all Carmilla wanted was a shower, a long, proper drink of water that hadn’t been fed through her suit’s Sus-Sys*, and to stop feeling like her every pore was choking on dust, despite the lack of dust that was on her skin.

“This is really heart-warming and all, but...”

Carmilla wasn’t sure how she would finish that sentence, but she didn’t have to think of it, because three words in Kirsch stepped aside so that she could pass. She punched him in the arm - the closest she’d come to a fist bump with him - and walked into the base.

From the bathroom she couldn’t hear the rest of them talking, and that made her both relieved and uncomfortable. She fought back the discomfort by sticking her face under the tap and taking a long drink from the side of her mouth. She wasn’t dehydrated, Laura must have topped up her Sus-Sys while they were in the caves, but her throat was overwhelmingly dry and the water was satisfyingly soothing.

With water running down her face, she pressed her palms to the dimpled plastic counter, and hung her head, panting against the sudden influx of water. The stale smell of her breath hit her nose and she grimaced.

Gross. Okay, teeth first.

She found her dental kit in the medicine cabinet and started to brush her teeth, eyeing her reflection in the mirror as she did. She leaned forward, staring at herself fixedly as her toothbrush went slack in her mouth. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she only found her own same, grief-tinged face. She shook herself out of the moment and instead focused on the sink where drops of toothpaste splattered the plastic as she continued brushing her teeth.

When she was finished she ran her tongue over the outside of her teeth, and even the small thing of clean teeth was enough to make her feel more like this was real. This was all real.

Part of her wanted to sink to the floor, but her feet carried her to the shower cubicle instead.

The water was cold, all of the semi-working Base Hermes hardware tended to become hardly working during storms, but the water was comforting anyway. She let it run down her arm for a moment before stripping off the layers of uniform that she’d worn under her space suit. The tight fitting skins had done their best to slick away the perspiration from her skin, but the light grey was stained with sweat. Peeling the material off her skin felt like release, release from constriction, release from the stale sweat.

The air drew goosebumps from her skin, but she didn’t shiver as she stepped into the shower and let the recycled water start to wash her clean.

\---

It took Laura until after the sun had set to enter the bunks and sit by Carmilla’s bed. Carmilla had collapsed into bed after her shower, and no one else had dared enter the room, but Carmilla could recognise Laura’s breathing now - after everything that happened, they had reached a state of intimacy, but through the harsh force of necessity, rather than affection and time.

Carmilla hadn’t slept since the shower. The dreams she’d had in the caves nipped at her heels, and any moment she felt like she was nodding off, she’d snap back awake again.

Laura had her hair wrapped in a towel, which surprised Carmilla. The Mars standard was to use the body dryer instead of a towel - towels were an unnecessary luxury that just took up space. Of course, they weren’t unheard of, but they were frowned upon; in the same way that trading rations was frowned upon.

Carmilla was on the top bunk, so from her angle she could only see the top of Laura’s towel pile. She mused about how she’d never learned to wrap her hair up like that, how she used to fascinatedly watch her mother - her real mother - do it.

She’d never gotten to ask her how she did it, and learning it from YouTube felt too depressing.

“Checking if I’m lucid?” Carmilla asked, and cleared the hoarseness out of her throat as she shifted towards the edge enough to peer down at Laura.

Laura seemed surprised that Carmilla was awake, and Carmilla wondered what Laura was planning to do if she had been asleep. The surprise passed quickly, and was replaced with an oddly precise softness, which was present everywhere in her face except for her eyes. Those quickly surveyed Carmilla with an attentive focus, before settling back on Carmilla’s face.

Ignoring Carmilla’s question, Laura asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Are you my new shrink?”

“Do you need a shrink?”

“Touché.”

Laura sighed, and the sound felt like sandpaper on Carmilla’s already worn down nerves. What Laura said next, however, was completely unexpected.

“I was really scared.” Laura let out a shudder of a breath. “I thought we were going to die.”

Carmilla didn’t need to see the honesty in Laura’s face to feel it in her tone.

“I thought...” Laura shook her head, staring at the ground as she tried to finish the sentence. “I thought my dad was right.”

An eerie coldness shot down Carmilla’s spine - this was the first they’d broached the topic of what Laura had said at Zeus, and Carmilla felt the press of its significance.

“When he disowned me he said-” Laura stuck her pointer finger up, wagging it at an invisible, younger Laura as she imitated him, “You’re going to die out there!” She dropped the hand back into her lap with a slight exhale.

“Why are you telling me this?” Carmilla asked in a watery voice that she hated as soon as it left her lips. For a moment, Carmilla hated Laura, hated the ease with which she let her secrets flow from her, and the fact that she so readily told Carmilla about them.

But mostly, Carmilla hated herself for not being the same. After everything... Every secret she had, every scrap of real honesty, felt like a limited resource that she didn’t dare share. The end of her relationship with Ell had left her so bare, picked clean of all her truths, and she couldn’t be like that ever again.

Even if part of her wanted to for the scientist that had certainly saved their lives. (Whether it was because she felt she owed her, or because she genuinely considered the idea of trusting her, Carmilla didn’t know and didn’t have the energy to explore.)

Then, it occurred to her. “Did I say something?” Laura was silent, but her mouth twitched. Carmilla clarified, “Out there. Did I-?” And then, because she was certain she had, “What did I say?”

Laura’s eyes were sad on her. “Does it matter?”

The question, the look, even the sheet on top of her, was too much. Carmilla threw the sheet off and sat up as much as she could in the alcove of the bunk. “Of course it matters,” she replied, with a voice full of venom.

Laura stood, but it wasn’t clear if she was doing it to close the height difference between them, or as a defensive reaction.

Carmilla pushed herself off the bed and towards Laura, but it wasn’t meant to threaten her. If anything, it was meant to make up for her previous movements, to bring herself down to the same level as Laura, as if that counted as an apology.

Of course, Laura didn’t know that, so she took a step back, which caused Carmilla to press her back against the sides of the bunks to give Laura as much space as she could. There was two metres of space between them, as big a gap you could get in the compact bunks area.

This time Carmilla was careful to keep her tone steady as she asked, “What did I say?”

Carmilla knew that even if she knew the words she’d said, she wouldn’t be able to shove them back into her mouth, but the nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach demanded the question be asked.

Laura seemed to recognise Carmilla’s effort, because she relaxed slightly - even if that felt mostly for Carmilla’s sake. The awkward half-lean Laura was doing against the wall certainly didn’t look comfortable.

“You said...” Laura let out a silent breath, her eyes unable to meet Carmilla’s. “You said that it would be ironic if you suffocated because your parents drowned.”

Carmilla was glad that the bunks were at her back. She slid down, letting herself collapse into Kirsch’s bunk. He hadn’t claimed it when he was first stationed to Hermes, even though it was the only free one left at the base. Instead, Carmilla had successfully intimidated him into crashing on the uncomfortable trundle beds.

Until three weeks later, when one of Sojourner’s parts had been damaged and he’d pulled some strings to get the part delivered to them from the Athena scrapheap. It was impossible to get anything delivered from the highly monitored base for an unapproved personal project, even if they were obsolete parts.

That night he had come into the sleeping quarters to find his bedding on the bunk under Carmilla’s, the trundle packed away.

Shortly after, Carmilla found out that Kirsch had a habit of sleep-kicking, when she was woken up by her mattress being lifted into the air from underneath. These days, she always kept a spare pillow by her side to wake him when the kicking started.

The memory came to her as Laura’s words echoed in her head - _Everyone here’s lost something_.

Laura drew Carmilla from her memories with a soft, almost whispered, “I won’t tell anyone.”

Laura’s quiet promise hit a nerve that Carmilla wasn’t even aware of.

She wasn’t consciously worried that Laura would tell someone, but hearing her say the words felt like releasing a muscle knot deep in her chest that had been grinding against her for years.

Carmilla didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to express the feeling of relief that Laura had caused. She didn’t even know if the scientist had done it on purpose, or if she’d stumbled across it as accidentally as she’d guessed at Carmilla’s previous storm experience.

So, she just said, “Thank you.”

Laura’s expression didn’t give anything away, but her smile was stunning in a warm, understated way. Then, her face took on a hint of sadness. “I’m really sorry about your parents.”

“It was a long time ago,” Carmilla said, not unkindly, although the roughness of her voice made it seem so.

Carmilla readied herself for the pulling away, the returned snap of hard anger, but it didn’t come. Instead, Laura’s smile didn’t waver, if anything it just grew warmer. Carmilla felt the overwhelming sense of relief at someone understanding her intention without her having to explain.

When Laura closed the space between them, Carmilla didn’t flinch; and when Laura sat next to her, she didn’t withdraw; and when Laura took Carmilla’s hand, she let her.

Without the gloves it was different. Not needing the confirmation of pressure meant they could be gentle with each other, and still feel it.

Camilla felt as if her skin was a brittle shell that would crumble from even the slightest pressure. But Laura didn’t break her. Instead of pressing, or asking, or even saying anything, she just _was_. And so, instead of fighting, or deflecting, or retreating, Carmilla just was too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Sus-Sys: Sustenance System
> 
> Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed the second part. There will likely be a third part :)
> 
> Join me on tumblr at [churchofyourcurves](http://www.churchofyourcurves.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haven't mentioned this yet, but I have zero expertise when it comes to engineering, science, and astronomy so my apologies for any mistakes that I've made.

_Four years ago_

Ell sighed as she sat at the small vanity crammed at the end of their bed, applying makeup to her face. “I hate my mole.”

Carmilla made a sound from behind a book. “How can you hate your mole? It’s the first thing I liked about you.”

“You mean you didn’t fall for my sparkling wit and incredible intelligence?”

“Didn’t even notice them.”

Ell scanned the vanity for something throwable and settled on a partially used cotton wipe, balling it up and aiming at Carmilla’s face. It made a lazy arc through the air before landing on her knee.

“I really hate it though.” Ell returned to the previous topic as she examined it in the mirror disdainfully. “It’s so ugly.”

Carmilla didn’t have much of a taste for ego boosting, but she put her book page-down on the bed and shuffled to the end of it, wrapping her arms around Ell so that her fingers were laced together. She pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “Well, I really love it.”

Ell met Carmilla’s eyes in the mirror. “Really?”

“Really really.”

Carmilla pressed a kiss to her fingertips and then touched the mole with them. Ell shied away from the affection with a bashful smile, ducking her face and examining the makeup on the vanity.

Satisfied with the result, Carmilla slunk back to the head of the bed and picked her book back up.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the graduation ceremony?” Ell asked, broaching the much-discussed topic gently as she continued to get ready. Every time that it had come up before Carmilla had shut it down immediately, and this time was no different.

Carmilla scoffed. “Go to some pointless ceremony full of people patting themselves on the back for completing a mandatory course? No, thank you.”

“It’s not a shortcoming to want to celebrate an accomplishment.”

“Please,” Carmilla snorted, not catching the way Ell’s back went stiff. “Passing isn’t an accomplishment when failure means being sent back.”

Ell didn’t reply, but the snap of her shutting her compact seemed enough of a response. It cut through the air in the room, and made the hair on the back of Carmilla’s neck stand on end. Suddenly the comfortable, relaxed position felt like it was forced, and she didn’t dare move from it in case it betrayed the way all her muscles had tensed. Ell stood from the vanity jerkily, tilting the stool back so that it hit the end of the bed and balanced there awkwardly.

Carmilla didn’t lower the book, but her eyes kept focusing on one word, and as hard as she tried she couldn’t manage to move to the next. Something in the room’s tension kept tripping her up. She couldn’t lower the book either; it felt like a shield from Ell’s disappointment, the last thing keeping Carmilla together.

Ell sighed and left the cabin.

It took Carmilla fifteen minutes to finally read the rest of the sentence. By the time she reached the full stop, it felt like all the air in her lungs had turned stale, and her throat had gone thick with the emotions battling to escape.

\---

The storm passed over the base a day and a half after Laura and Carmilla had arrived at Hermes, and once it finally passed Carmilla was the first to the space suits by the front entrance to no one’s surprise.

She was pulling on the pants when Laura came into the room and a soft sort of warmth crossed her face. “You’re going outside?”

Carmilla paused for a moment, before strapping the pants on tight and nodding. It had been a tradition started three years ago, and had been Dr Cochrane approved - not that that was important to Carmilla. But it still gave her a snappy comeback to people if they tried to question her.

Laura’s question was different than the usual. “Can I come?”

Carmilla picked up the helmet from the shelf, considering, and then she nodded again. She’d never shared this act with anyone, but given that they’d spent the storm together, it made sense to spend the post-storm together too.

Unlike the previous time when they’d shared their vulnerabilities too quickly, something about being caught in the storm had eased the air between them. It still felt odd; a mix of being very new but also very deep, but for once, relaxing into it didn’t leave Carmilla vulnerable. It just happened.

They both suited up with a focused silence, and then procedurally checked each other’s suits. However, when their eyes locked their autopilot expressions crumbled into unsure smiles and they quickly diverted their gazes, like teenagers about to go to prom.

Carmilla busied herself with the airlock, although she certainly didn’t need to examine it as much as she was. She had already set up a commlink between her suit and the base, and after most of the heat had cooled at the back of her neck, she gestured for Laura’s stats monitor, patching her into the same line. Commander Lawrence barely tolerated Carmilla’s disobedience when it came to comms, she would give her an exceptionally long lecture if she didn’t set up the scientist’s.

“You ready?” Carmilla asked, once the link had been established.

Laura nodded emphatically, making her helmet bob up and down. Carmilla tried not to notice how endearing a sight it was. She moved aside and waved Laura through, and while they waited for the airlock to depressurize, she asked, “Have you been out under it before?”

Laura turned so that she could see her through the clear panel of the visor. “Not under it. I mean, I’ve seen it, but-”

Carmilla wasn’t surprised, the safety precautions at Athena were strictly enforced, even when they were overkill.

The outside airlock doors opened and Laura gasped.

On Mars there was a post-storm phenomenon that when the dust finally cleared the sun’s rays interacted with the thin atmosphere, creating a beautiful glow that lit up the sky in a dazzling aurora, equivalent to the size of a glowing continent splayed across the sky.

Witnessing it behind the glass of Athena was one thing, but walking out under it was another thing entirely.

As far as the eye could see, the sky that was usually white with tinges of yellow, was now a swirling nebula of greens, blues, purples, silvers, and all the colours in between. Laura walked out under it, her face turned up to the sky, and was turning slowly on the spot with her arms held out for balance, as if this would help her take in the entire sky at once.

Laura’s delighted laughter filtered through Carmilla’s helmet, and Carmilla stepped forward to join her under the palette of lights, her eyes on the scientist rather than the sky. Laura sped up for a few revolutions, her laughing getting lighter and giddier, before she slowed back down to standing there, slightly swaying from the spinning. Her expression was overflowing with joy and wonder, and Carmilla knew, she _knew_ that this was why they had all travelled over 50 million kilometres to get to this planet. It was for _this_ , this moment, this joy, or the pursuit of it.

Carmilla remembered the first time she’d done this - still shaking and raw from the storm, but determined to prove to Dr Cochrane that she could. She'd been so stubborn that when her legs locked up she’d considered dragging herself out onto the surface of the planet. But when she’d seen the aurora...

The times she’d seen it before were at Athena, first during a Mars Environment tutorial, then a few times afterwards when Ell had insisted they go and Carmilla had begrudgingly complied. She used to dryly list facts about the aurora in the most boring voice possible to drive Ell crazy, so she’d be granted an early reprieve from something that enchanted Ell and bored Carmilla.

But after being caught in the storm three years ago, that first time she’d walked out into it, it became hers. It was no longer an environmental process that filtered out the sun’s rays into different colours - now it was a sign that she had survived. A victory, against all odds.

She supposed that Laura’s wonder was a reflection of Ell’s, although Ell had never been so outwardly giddy, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because Carmilla was different, because Laura wasn’t Ell, and because reaching for Laura’s hand felt as natural as breathing.

Laura turned to her at the contact, their eyes connecting, and the aurora painted across both their visors. There was no surprise on Laura’s face, but her smile did grow as she squeezed Carmilla’s hand back.

They turned back up to the sky as one, drinking in the sight of the colours filling the sky.

\---

Laura managed to convince Base Athena that she and the other scientist should stay to investigate Thermopylae Mons further. Carmilla had no idea how the scientist had managed to get clearance to investigate a black zone, but she wasn’t terribly surprised.

The wary look that Perry gave them both did mildly entertain Carmilla though. The morale officer’s obsession with rules had Athena written all over it, even if she’d somehow landed at Hermes. (For the first time, Carmilla wondered why she’d been stationed here.)

Adapting to two extra people in the small base was a work in progress - especially since the scientists’ had claimed part of the foyer area. The other scientist had tried to stake a claim in the Mechanics wing, but Carmilla had refused that immediately, and it seemed they were more comfortable with pissing off Perry than Carmilla. To be fair to them, Carmilla had access to heavy tools, while all Perry had was a skill in storming off.

Late into the night, after she’d finished flicking through the latest journal article published by the Athena Engineering Department, Carmilla walked into the dining area to a sight that she definitely had not been expecting - Kirsch and Perry sharing Kirsch’s latest batch of microbrew beer. Perry was leaning forward sloppily on her hand, her palm pulling up the side of her face so that her mouth was open and skewed, while her cheek was closing her eye. Kirsch was somewhat less drunk, but the way he was bobbing up and down in his seat was definitely not sober.

“It’s just- it’s-” Perry hiccupped. “It’s _my_ space, you know? I mean, I share it with the Commander, but of course they aren’t enc-enr-encoar-” Perry frowned and then took in a quick breath and exclaimed, “ _Encroaching_ on her side of the foyer.” Satisfied that she’d managed to get out the word that had been giving her so much trouble, she nodded to herself and took a victory sip of her beer.

“You tell ‘em!” Kirsch cheered - not that Kirsch cheering was much of an accomplishment. Anything said with enough vigour would get him cheering, especially with a beer in his hand.

Carmilla rolled her eyes and stepped fully into the eating area, going over to the fridge to grab the dinner leftovers, dryly commenting, “I must have lost my invite in the mail.”

“B _rrrr_ o!” Kirsch rolled his tongue to elongate the ‘r’, and threw his arms open.

Carmilla sat as far away from him as possible. Unfortunately, this meant that she was on the same side as Perry, and the morale officer shuffled down the bench towards Carmilla as she started to pick at the rice on the plate. Carmilla regarded Perry out of the corner of her eye, she’d never seen the morale officer drinking, and apparently alcohol made her weirdly stare-y.

“Why do you hate me?” Perry asked, her voice surprisingly clear of slurring. Of course, the way her eyes were swimming still made it clear how drunk she was.

“Uh.” Carmilla cursed her need to eat. “I don’t hate you.”

Carmilla chanced a glance at the morale officer, and - _God,_ was she _pouting_?

“You _do_ hate me,” Perry insisted.

“No, no,” Kirsch said, waving his hand back and forth. “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Once Perry’s attention was on him he went on, “She’s just like that. She doesn’t hate you.”

“At least she talks to you,” Perry replied in a sulky voice.

Carmilla grunted and gestured to Kirsch. “Give me the beer.”

Kirsch wrapped an arm protectively around the pitcher and asked in a small voice. “Are you going to throw it out again?”

“I’m going to drink it, numb nuts, because I am not being sober around this conversation.”

After a long moment, he passed over the pitcher and a spare glass, but his eyes were narrowed suspiciously on Carmilla until she poured herself a glass and had a long drink.

“Did I do something wrong?” Perry asked, eyes wide and hurt.

Carmilla had been in the process of passing the pitcher back to Kirsch, but she said a quiet, “Nope,” to herself, shaking her head and pulling the pitcher back to fill the glass again, right to the brim.

She returned the pitcher, sitting down while taking another long drink of the beer. She scowled at the taste, it was a poor attempt at the Earth drink, but it was better than his first batch that had left him hospitalized at Zeus after throwing up for forty-eight straight hours.

“I don’t hate you,” Carmilla reiterated. “I don’t like you, but I don’t hate you.”

The teary look on Perry’s face changed to confused as she said, “Well, that’s good? I suppose.”

The eating area door opened and Carmilla was the only one to look up, the other two too drunk to clock it. Laura stood there, a bemused expression on her face at finding the three of them drinking beer. She stepped into the room, the door closing behind her, and Carmilla pushed aside the clench of her chest at Laura’s appearance.

“I’m not with them,” Carmilla clarified quickly.

Laura didn’t reply to that, instead she sat opposite Carmilla and snagged her beer, taking a sip of it and pulling a face. “Ugh,” she gagged, “this is worse than Earth beer. I didn’t even know beer could get worse.”

“Hey!” Kirsch held up a finger, taking offense on behalf of the beer, cradling the pitcher with his other arm. “Don’t be mean to the beer.”

“You’re right,” Laura agreed, without a trace of condescension. She leaned over to the pitcher. “I’m sorry, beer.”

Kirsch held the pitcher up to his ear, as if listening for a response, and then gave Laura a blinding, lopsided smile. “Beer forgives you.”

Laura seemed absolutely charmed by Kirsch’s antics, and regarded him warmly, before turning to Carmilla and picking off one of the pieces of roast potato off her plate to pop into her mouth.

Carmilla raised an eyebrow at Laura’s sharing practices, but pushed the plate to the middle of the table nevertheless.

Perry leaned over the table, her arm reaching towards Laura as she asked desperately, “Does LaFontaine hate me?”

Laura was completely caught off guard by the question, still chewing on the potato in her mouth as her eyebrows leapt up her forehead.

“Perry thinks everyone hates her,” Carmilla explained, although she didn’t know why she did. She’d never explained on someone else’s behalf, unless it was entirely sarcastic, but it had just slipped out.

Laura looked less confused about the question, although she still wasn’t done chewing, so the entire room sat in silence, waiting for Laura to swallow her food.

When Laura finally did, she choked out a gravelly, “They don’t hate you.”

“It feels like they hate me,” Perry mumbled sadly.

“We’re all adjusting to being here together.” Laura’s eyes shot to Carmilla’s, but it wasn’t pointed - it was like they were a team. “I’m sorry we took your area of the foyer, it really is the best place for the sample categorisation and storage.”

“I _know_ ,” Perry insisted, her bottom lip sticking out childishly. “But they always ignore me, or snap at me, and that time that I moved the tray because _I didn’t know what it was_ ,” she emphasized, sure to make eye contact with everyone at the table as if to get them on side, “they yelled at me.”

“They take a while to warm up to new people,” Laura admitted, “but they’ll get there.”

Perry took a long moment to judge Laura’s honesty before finally clapping her palms on her thighs. “Alright, well, I think I should go to bed, I’ve had quite enough alcohol.” She focused - or focused as much as she could - on Kirsch and nodded. “I approve of your beer brew, Kirsch.” Her attention turned inwards for a moment as she chuckled to herself and repeated under her breath, “Beer brew.”

Kirsch beamed. “Thanks, dude.”

With a curt nod - made less curt by the uneven way she stood up from the bench - she stumbled to the bunks.

Kirsch looked from Carmilla to Laura with a dreamy smile on his face, before seeming to realise something and leaping to his feet, tilting the tabletop as he did. “Me too, bed. Yeah.” He kissed the pitcher, before carefully placing it back in the fridge and left Carmilla and Laura alone.

Laura watched him go, her expression considering. “Are they-?” Her eyebrows jumped up and down, and Carmilla couldn’t help the incredulous laughter that tumbled out of her mouth at _that_ mental image.

Carmilla prodded the plate closer to Laura before standing up.

Laura watched her. “Secret project again?”

Carmilla hummed and nodded, picking up the glass of beer that she knew Laura wouldn’t touch again, and downing the rest of it in one go. She put the glass back down as she pulled a face and hissed at the taste.

“Are you ever going to tell me what it is?” Laura asked in a voice that sounded like she’d rather wait. Laura had admitted that she loved surprises when it had first come up, and it was that admission that kept Carmilla’s lips sealed on the topic.

“Give me a week,” Carmilla promised.

“Fine,” Laura gave in. Then, a mischievous look crossed her face. “What if I said I had a secret project too?”

“Ooh, matching,” Carmilla said suggestively and cutting all at once, but free of any real barb.

Laura laughed as Carmilla left the room, and her laughter continued to dance through Carmilla’s mind, making each step she took lighter than the last.

\---

“Can I take the blindfold off yet?” Laura asked, growing impatient even though it had only gone on half a minute ago. Carmilla pulled her forward another step, centring her in front of the project that had consumed so much of her (and Kirsch’s) time.

“Okay,” Carmilla said, as she held her breath, “now.”

Laura pulled off the Mars Exploration issue sleep mask Carmilla had borrowed from Perry, and her already delighted expression faded to confusion. Her eyes went from the machine in front of her to Carmilla, looking like she desperately wanted to be thrilled but not knowing about what.

“You fixed the Rover,” Laura said, the attempt at enthusiasm making her voice weak and giving it an unsure lilt.

Carmilla frowned. “I didn’t fix it.” She was mildly insulted that Laura thought she considered that an accomplishment. “I _up_ graded it.”

“Upgraded?” Laura echoed, eyes still shifting from the Rover to Carmilla.

It seemed that their understanding of each other didn’t extend to mechanics.

Carmilla walked over to the Rover, touching the eight legs that extended up from the chassis, and then bent down towards the ground like spider’s legs - four on each side. The tip of the legs looked like the outline of a diamond, with four metal prongs that bent out and then came together into a sharp point at the bottom, and these hung around the centre of the tyres. “One of the issues with driving in places like Olympus and Thermopylae Mons-”

“-are the layers of dust on the surface,” Laura finished, still not catching on. “Yeah, so?”

“These are designed to dig through the dirt, down to the rock and be an anchor. So...” Carmilla gave a pained smile, doing something like this had seemed easy, but explaining it was far more difficult. For a moment she appreciated Kirsch’s ability to decipher her ideas without her saying anything. “You can drive up onto the Mons. Safely.”

Laura’s mouth dropped into a gentle ‘o’.

She walked towards the Rover slowly, taking in the new additions - the anchors, the joints that made the bed of the Rover flexible for rocky terrain, and the extra protective parts that had turned the Rover into more of a climber than a roller.

Carmilla tried to relax her nervousness at Laura not saying anything by shuffling in place. She was proud of what she’d done, it was something that could change the research process on Mars, or at least let Laura do what she already did without wrecking another Rover, and it had taken most of Kirsch’s connections, and a slew of eighteen-hour work days. By the last week she had even started dreaming about it, troubleshooting things in her sleep.

Laura was peering into the Rover cab. “Did you keep the sample pod?”

Carmilla’s eyebrow quirked. “Of course.”

Laura rounded the corner, and stood on the tips of her toes to get a better look at the interior. “Accounting for the more uneven trips?”

Carmilla’s face pulled into something between insulted and amused. “Duh.”

Laura had grabbed onto the side rail, pulled herself up onto the side step, and put a hand on one of the spider-leg anchors, testing its sturdiness. “How much charge do these use?”

Carmilla walked around to Laura’s side, watching her press her fingers against the leg’s joints, before examining their tips fixedly. “You get four hours of climbing time. Driving time is normal.”

“Four hours,” Laura repeated to herself, deep in thought as she seemed to start calculating routes in her mind.

Carmilla cocked her head. “Will that suit your majesty?”

Laura flushed, but it was gone a moment later as she curtseyed while still standing on the side step, one hand holding onto the spider-leg anchor. Which of course, wasn’t locked in, so when she reached the deepest part of her curtsey it shifted, and the movement threw Laura’s balance off, sending her keeling forward.

Carmilla moved to catch the scientist, but Laura managed to twist her body, grabbing onto one of the Rover’s exterior rails, and keeping herself on the step. She shot Carmilla a grimace over her shoulder. “So, apparently, curtseying? Probably not a good idea while on the Rover.” She shimmied on the step, pulling herself up to standing up straight and carefully turning so she was facing Carmilla again.

Carmilla didn’t say anything, but she didn’t disguise her smile as she offered forward a hand.

Laura took it, letting Carmilla support her as she stepped off the Rover and back onto solid ground. When she was in front of Carmilla she didn’t let go of her hand, and from this close the breathless way Laura was looking at her felt suffocating, overwhelming and wonderful all at once.

Laura blinked, and reached up to touch Carmilla’s face, her hand moving as slowly as molasses, and her fingertips feather-light across Carmilla’s skin. She was staring at her in the same way she’d stared at the aurora, just as full of wonder, but without the giddiness. Instead, it was anchored in something deeper, hovering along the edge of sadness.

Carmilla curled her body into Laura’s, as if Laura was a flame and Carmilla was desperate to warm herself. Their hands were still joined, palms pressed flush together. Carmilla couldn’t tell if Laura had tipped her face up to her, but the lines had started to blur the fact’s importance. Laura’s hand was tracing a curving path down from her cheekbone to her jaw and Carmilla was fighting every cell in her body against letting Laura become her centre.

Laura’s eyes dropped to Carmilla’s lips, and Carmilla’s eyes stayed on Laura’s, and the world around them felt like it was buzzing with anticipation.

Until Carmilla realised that she was the one full of anticipation, and it was at that same moment that Laura licked her lips.

Carmilla felt her mouth drop open slightly - _was she serious right now?_

“Thank you,” Laura said quietly, her eyes still on Carmilla’s mouth, seeming loath to leave it.

“For what?”

Carmilla could feel the scientist in front of her stealing her centre, piece by piece, and could feel herself start to give it willingly.

Laura’s eyes finally went up to Carmilla’s, peering at her through thick lashes that Carmilla felt a sudden urge to count. “The Rover.”

“Oh,” Carmilla said softly, the only thing she could manage as a reply because she knew she had to reply, but her mind didn’t offer any words. Laura’s eyes searched Carmilla’s, and Carmilla dug a husky, “You’re welcome,” from her mind.

“What did you think I was thanking you for?” Laura asked, and her smile made it look like this was a joke, but there was something in her eyes that was hopeful.

Carmilla imagined kissing her instead of answering.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed someone, or someone had kissed her. It must have been at some point during the drawn-out break up with Ell, but she couldn’t remember the actual kiss. Thinking about her last kiss with Ell while Laura was right in front of her was jarring, and it was the unfairness that broke her out of the moment.

She pulled away from Laura, though she let their hands stay linked. The disappointment on Laura’s face was clear, and Carmilla tried to ignore it as she cleared her throat and said, “Let me show you how to work this thing.”

\---

A loud whoop came from the tablet and Kirsch scooped it up from the workshop bench with a grin on his face. Carmilla looked up from the air filter she was taking apart to see Kirsch beaming at the screen, while cheers continued to filter through the speakers. Carmilla had streamed the Rover’s interior camera through the tablet for the first of the Rover’s runs, a safety precaution, but a largely unnecessary one. Her mech never failed.

“This is amazing!” Laura’s voice was full of a thrilled excitement, and Carmilla tried to tuck away the smile on her face by focusing on the filter’s screws.

“Dude!” Kirsch kicked his chair over to her, nudging her and thrusting the screen in front of her face. On it, Laura’s expression was breathlessly delighted, and Carmilla thought (not for the first time) that Laura was beyond beautiful. Next to her, the other scientist looked just as excited, their eyes manic and mouth open in a huge smile.

The cabin of the Rover tilted from side to side as they climbed the Mons, and Kirsch seemed to reflect its movements as he bopped in his seat.

Carmilla let herself watch Laura’s smile for another few moments, before returning to the filter. This wasn’t the first time she’d developed Mars mech for the better, it wasn’t even the first time she’d done it for a scientist, and it was this that kept her feelings muted. She was happy, no, not happy, she was _proud_. An even more alien feeling than happiness, she kept the feeling safe at the centre of her chest rather than let others see it and let them have a chance at extinguishing it.

“How was the torsional vibration in the last test?” Kirsch asked, and Carmilla recognised the attentiveness just under his excitement.

“Good, the joint adjustment made a huge difference,” Carmilla admitted.

Kirsch’s attention went to her, the mix of pride and surprise on his face so loud it was basically a question mark hovering over his head.

“Don’t look so surprised, Van Wilder,” Carmilla said as she slipped the filter screen out and started to peel back the layer of dust, not looking at him as she assured, “it was a good idea.”

“Thanks, dude,” he said, voice hushed with awe and pride.

Carmilla didn’t reply as she started to put the filter back together.

“Hey,” he started, and there was something about the way he said it that sounded like a child trying to work out how to ask for something, “do you think Athena’ll be impressed?”

Something in Carmilla hardened and she snapped, “Why would that matter?”

His face was ashamed instantly, his mouth dropping into a sulking pout as he shrugged his shoulders asymmetrically and mumbled, “I don’t know. I just...” Carmilla couldn’t decipher the rest of his words that he muttered into his chest, but she felt a stab of uncomfortable guilt.

She may have asked to be stationed at Hermes, but he hadn’t.

“They won’t just be impressed. This will change their sheltered little lives.”

The smile that spread across Kirsch’s face felt like it was about more than just what Carmilla had said, but that it was about the fact she’d said it at all. Carmilla wondered how she’d gotten to a place where one of the people who understood her so easily was an ex-frat bro mechanic.

“I’m going to put this back.” Her eyes dropped to the scientists who had parked the Rover and were now trying to decide the best way to get out. “Keep an eye on them.”

He beamed and saluted her, returning his focus to the tablet, his shoulders hunched as he watched it studiously.

She got to the doorway of the Mechanics wing before hesitating and looking back at the mechanic, who was still concentrating on the tablet, where the scientists were now doing scissors-paper-rock to see who would get to leave the Rover first. In that moment, she decided that he deserved more than a forgotten base in a valley of dust.

Later on, Carmilla was cleaning the solar panels with the air pressure cleaner when the scientists’ Rover came back to the base, coated in a thick layer of dust everywhere except for a small strip of the front windshield.

The Rover barely came to a stop around the side of the base before the hatch popped open and someone wearing a spacesuit stuck their head out - Carmilla assumed Laura from the enthusiastic way she was waving. Carmilla raised a hand in reply, and Laura got out of the Rover, hopping down onto the ground and running over to her.

Carmilla noticed that the other scientist took longer to get out, weighed down by the portable sample box, but before she could comment Laura threw her arms around Carmilla, and it felt like another thank you, but this time it was more about the Rover than them.

When Laura was helping Carmilla clean off the Rover, Carmilla asked her about getting in touch with Athena.

\---

_Three and a half years ago_

“You _told_ him!” Carmilla stormed into their bunk, her hands clenching into fists as she felt the anger ripple through her body, like a wave of fire raging through her body in untrackable surges that demanded to be acted upon. Prickly energy that started in the pit of her stomach, and made her skin crawl, and dug her fingernails into her palms so hard that the skin threatened to break.

Ell followed her into the room, her expression distraught. Not that Carmilla cared right now. “I wanted you to get credit for your work, you didn’t want to tell anyone.”

“Because it wasn’t meant for other people,” Carmilla spat out, “it was for you.” Carmilla turned on Ell, her eyes flashing dangerously. “You think I give a shit about what they all think of me? I am the best they have, and I know that. I don’t need them to pat me on the back and tell me that.”

“This isn’t about-” Ell waved her hand through the air, searching for the word “-it isn’t some _platitude_ , Carmilla. This is about furthering your professional career and getting recognition that will lead to better positions. I know you want to make a difference.”

“I don’t need to be in ‘better positions’ to make a difference.”

Ell shook her head and said, “You don’t understand anything about office politics,” in a quiet voice that drove Carmilla’s anger up even further.

“Gee, why don’t you teach me then, Maestro?” Carmilla snapped, her tone bordering on cruel.

Ell fell back, hurt flashing across her face, but Carmilla’s anger didn’t let her stop, instead driving her forward and pushing again with a demand hushed by her sense of betrayal, “What gave you the right to tell him?”

“I _told_ you,” Ell started, her voice dropping to Carmilla’s volume, but sounding forced through the desperation, “he would know who to tell and how to get it out there. I didn’t know that he would-”

“Take the credit for my work?”

The words filled the air between them. Carmilla was on one side of their bed, Ell on the other. This was the furthest they could be from each other in the small cabin, and it felt like there was a gaping chasm between them, and far too cramped at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” Ell said, on the edge of tears, and she was sorry, it was written plain across her face and in the rawness of her voice. “I didn’t know he... Please, Carmilla, I didn’t want this to happen.”

“No shit,” Carmilla replied, not giving a single inch in the face of Ell’s desperation.

“He’s not the kind of-”

“You think I _care_ what kind of person he is?” Carmilla’s hands itched to throw something, to let the anger out in a way that was more than words because the effect they were having wasn’t enough. _Nothing_ was enough. The fury was everything, and she got no relief from it. It felt like it was burning her alive, and Ell wasn’t _listening_ , she wasn’t _listening_ to what she’d done, she couldn’t _hear_ what Carmilla was saying. Everything Ell was saying was just making things worse, Carmilla didn’t know what would help, but it certainly wasn’t the words coming out of her mouth.

“I’m _sorry_.” Ell was crying now, ugly, messy tears, and for a crystal clear moment - Carmilla hated her. “I’m so, so sorry. Please, Carmilla, I’m sorry.”

Carmilla’s rage turned to disgust, so deep and full that she couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her. Ell was sobbing on the bed, snot and tears running down her face, continuing to beg as she weakly reached for Carmilla. Carmilla passed her outstretched hand, lip curled, as she left the room and walked and walked and walked.

\---

The cabin of the Rover was shuddering and Carmilla glanced around, tapping the gauges and checking the stability display, before realising that the bouncing was originating from the backseat, where they'd replaced the storage pod with a temporary seat for Kirsch. His legs were tucked in tight against his body, and his right leg was bouncing up and down so hard that the floor was shaking with it.

“I will staple your foot to the ground.”

Kirsch grimaced, his leg immediately freezing and then slowly lowering so the sole of his boot was flat.

Ignoring Carmilla’s threat, Laura turned in the passenger seat and asked him, “Are you nervous?”

He attempted to smile, but it came out strained, and he tugged his earlobe. “Kinda.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Laura encouraged, saying the words with such ease that Carmilla was stunned (as always), “you did an amazing job.”

Carmilla’s eyes met Kirsch’s in the rear view mirror and she added, “I’ll do the talking.”

A light flush filled his cheeks, but his relief was obvious. “Thanks, bro.” Sojourner was in his lap, and his hands clasped together for a moment, fingers knotting, before they resettled on the mini Rover’s casing, patting it distractedly.

They were a few hours into the journey to Base Athena. Laura had contacted them after Carmilla had asked, and set up an appointment with the engineering department board, which had been approved surprisingly quickly after she’d mentioned Carmilla’s name. Carmilla hadn’t been surprised.

Unlike the way to Base Zeus, where Thermopylae Mons gave way to flat plains, this way was far more mountainous. The valley widened slightly, but it was riddled with dips and ridges that rocked the cab of the Rover, and the jointed floor meant that Kirsch came close to hitting his head on storage compartment that hung above him every time they went over a large enough bump. They’d discussed taking the other Rover and hooking up the climber version behind it, but where would the fun be in that? Carmilla and Kirsch agreed to call it a road test.

They had reached the point where Thermopylae Mons started to blend back into the planet’s surface, and ahead was Olympus Mons. Olympus Mons was the second highest known mountain in the solar system, although it was almost impossible to tell if you were looking at it, because the incline was so flat that the only recognisable landmarks were a scattering of cliffs and valleys.

However, as with walking on glaciers, it was incredibly dangerous to travel across the surface since it was so thoroughly covered in dust that unless you had a Rover that anchored itself to the rock surface, the chances of falling into a hidden crevasse, or the Rover’s tyres losing traction, was high.

Which was what had brought the two scientists to Hermes in the beginning.

Carmilla turned to the right, skirting around the markers that signalled the edge of Olympus Mons. They were three feet tall, and painted a bright yellow that had been coated in a layer of rust-coloured dust over time. One of the markers had clearly been hit, the metal bent and twisted, yet still vainly trying to reach up from the ground like a twisted root.

She felt Laura shift next to her, but didn’t say anything. The yellow scrapings that lined the Rover’s deep scarring made more sense now.

“Nice driving,” Carmilla commented dryly.

Laura’s shoulders relaxed incrementally and she shot Carmilla a look that was probably meant to be insulted, but came out relieved. “Shut up.”

Carmilla grinned to herself as she checked their position. “We’re halfway there. Pit stop?”

Instantly, the Rover filled with a brittle tension - Laura was still dragging around guilt about asking for the break on the way back from Zeus, and Kirsch had been jumping at shadows the whole trip.

Carmilla waited for a response, until it became clear that they were too caught up in their respective angst. And yet, she was the one that got called brooding.

Carmilla rolled her eyes, continuing on to the base where the worst part of her life had happened. Her thought patterns returned to the familiar paths that she’d spent so much of the last three years walking in her mind.

What would she say if she saw Ell? She’d rehearsed so many different versions of that speech - angry, sad, forgiving, passive aggressive - and now...

She snuck a glance at Laura out of the corner of her eye, and something felt terribly disloyal about it. Though, she couldn’t tell who she was being disloyal to. Both? Neither?

Her eyes went to Kirsch’s face in the rear view mirror. His leg had started violently bouncing again as he tapped out a frantic rhythm on Sojourner.

“Hey,” she said, and his eyes flew to hers in the mirror, something manic in his face, which he quickly tried to hide. “What’s that stupid joke you always tell, with the penguin?”

He brightened immediately, leaning forward, and starting to tell the joke to a rapt Laura, who laughed in all the places that Carmilla usually glared in, and was so entertained by the punch line that her laughter was punctuated with several snorts.

Carmilla turned her attention to Olympus Mons as Kirsch continued to fire through his joke repertoire, and - like an addict returning to what had ruined their lives - indulged in the thoughts she’d done her best to steer away from since leaving Athena.

\---

_Four years ago_

Carmilla was sketching out a blueprint - just a fantasy, they didn’t have the technology to balance the axis’ torque yet - when Ell emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered and looking radiant. Her hair was gently, yet purposely curled, which meant-

“I’m going to FaceCall my parents, do you want to come?” she asked lightly as she crossed the room to the vanity, to re-check her hair.

Carmilla didn’t look up from the tablet. “I’m good.”

“Carmilla.” Ell sat on the end of the bed, eyes reproachful, and Carmilla sighed.

They’d had another fight about last month’s graduation ceremony the previous night, which had turned into a fight about how disconnected Carmilla was, and neither of them was in the mood to start it again. The Groundhog Day of arguing was taking its toll on both of them.

“I don’t do parents.” Carmilla’s stylus traced a curving line before she swiped it off the screen again, changing the angle of it to something more broad.

“I-” Ell bit her lip, they could both predict where this was going to go. So instead, she said, “Please, for me? Can you just do this for me? They always ask about you, and we’ve been living together for-” She sighed, a hand going through her blonde hair, and causing it to sit more messily. “Please.”

Carmilla looked up from the blueprints. Ell was trying, she really was. There was desperation shining in her eyes, and part of Carmilla wanted to say yes, wanted to give her what she wanted, but her stubbornness felt like steel through her veins. (A dark part of her hissed that she couldn’t give in, that to give in was to lose.) So, she just repeated, “I don’t do parents.”

Ell sighed, nodding and leaving without another word.

It felt like losing anyway, but in a different way, a quiet way that made Carmilla’s stomach swirl with horrible, gnawing discomfort. But that wasn’t enough to make her chase after Ell and hand over her pride on a platter. Nothing was enough to do that.

\---

Base Athena had been the result of years of research, planning, and design; a collaborative effort of engineers, architects, builders, physicists, geologists, and more. It was the newest Base (at least until Base Demeter was completed) - Hermes had been constructed during the lengthy building process as a necessary support station that had gradually turned obsolete.

Athena was a technical marvel, carved into the columned wall of a crater. The wall had been shaped a long time ago from the ancient dormant Olympus Mons volcano; the once running lava had created uniform hexagonal columns that ran down the crater wall, some of them protruding further than others. Embedded in these columns was Base Athena.

The only obvious signs of the base was the windows, set into the columns, especially the largest curved window near the peak of the wall - the observation deck that Carmilla had seen her first storm from.

At the base of the wall was a triple-enforced airlock, unlike Zeus’ entrance it was far taller, about five metres high, and could fit three Rovers side by side. Although, if they were measuring with their climbing Rover, two and three-quarters.

Carmilla had just patched into Athena’s comms, and didn’t have a chance to say anything before a voice came through the link, “Holy shit, Karnstein, is that you? I saw your name on the manifest but I didn’t think you’d turn up.”

Caught between distaste and discomfort, Carmilla relied on what she always relied on - her acerbic wit. “Thrilling. Are you going to open the airlock or do you want to discuss your disbelief some more?”

She snapped off the link, and the attention of the other two felt like a weight on her skin. Instead of addressing either of them, she counted out her heartbeats, and watched the airlock start to slide open.

Rather than being flat along the ground, Athena was built in a vertical and diagonal pattern - taking advantage of the most stable sections of the wall to ensure it had as much structural integrity as possible. The only section of the base at ground level was the entrance bay, which had more Rovers parked in it than Zeus. The Rovers in Athena were nowhere near as uniform as Zeus’, with each having different features and improvements added by the engineering or mechanical departments.

Kirsch was the first to scramble out of the Rover, after carefully tucking Sojourner out of sight, and Laura hesitated before she followed him.

“Are you okay?”

“Brilliant,” Carmilla snapped. The emotions that she refused to examine had evolved into a prickly bluntness, but Laura didn’t retract. Instead, she touched Carmilla on the arm, so lightly that it was barely more than a whisper across her skin.

The touch aggravated her irritation for a red flash of a moment, but it faded just as quickly, and by the time Laura climbed out of the Rover she found that the heat in the base of her skull had cooled entirely.

Grabbing her bag and tablet off the dashboard, she pulled herself up through the hatch and took in the entrance bay that she never thought she would return to. With a sneer that belied the anxiety underneath, she vindictively thought that Zeus’ was better.

She landed on the ground solidly next to Kirsch, who was shifting from foot to foot while he spun a mini wrench around the first knuckle of his pointer finger. Laura looked almost as apprehensive as him, although Carmilla had no idea why.

Then, the idiot door tech came to greet them with a smile that was far too comfortable for Carmilla’s liking. “Welcome back.”

Carmilla stalked past him without responding, letting the other two deal with it. He looked vaguely familiar, but she had no idea what his name was, or why he considered them on speaking terms.

She reached the elevator bay  and jammed the call button with her thumb. There were two elevators in the bay: the first was large and strong enough to carry a Rover (plus a few people) and it only went to the Mech Workshop floor and the entrance bay; the second was intended for people, and went to every level in the base. By the time the other two had extricated themselves from their social responsibilities, Carmilla was holding the elevator open for them. The effort was worth the warmth in Laura’s face when she rounded the corner.

They took the elevator to the ‘Ground’ floor - in this case, ‘Ground’ being a level above the ground - to check in to the main desk.

Despite the elevator being intended for people only, it was still quite generously sized and they each ended up gravitating to different walls. Kirsch had tucked his wrench into the chest pocket of his navy jumpsuit and was now tapping the handrail along the back wall with his thumbs; Laura was watching the elevator shaft lights shoot past through the thin glass strips on either side of the elevator doors; and Carmilla was watching Laura.

The elevator doors opened and _holy shit_ it was like being thrown back in time to when she’d just arrived on Mars.

The main foyer was bustling with people, headed to and from meetings that would likely drive forward the frontier of human discovery. The left wall of the foyer was a pane of glass, not as high or as curved as the observation deck, but certainly breathtaking in its view of the crater. In the centre of the foyer was a thick tube of glass that ran from floor to ceiling and in it was what remained of a meteorite that had been unearthed and thought to have created the crater. The tube was a metre wide, and the meteorite itself was almost seven metres long, a sliver of black rock with rivulets of silver and rainbow.

Around the tube was the main desk, it wrapped around it in a full circle and was usually manned by four people, although during the late night hours that went down to two. These were students, who had to complete a mandatory amount of desk hours for their courses. They had the tedious job of fielding calls, organising appointments, and generally staying on top of the geniuses that were brilliant with science and mechanics, but not so much with schedules.

On either side of the main desk were holographic statues of the two people who had given their lives for Hera. Towering fifteen feet tall, they had stood proudly in the Athena foyer since its construction. One a scientist, one an engineer.

Ell used to think it was romantic - a reflection of the bond between she and Carmilla. Now, that idea seemed more childish than ever, with Laura there gazing up at the mother she’d lost. Laura’s mother - the scientist - had a beaker in her left hand and was holding it aloft while squinting at it. The engineer on the other side had one hand on his hips, while his right hand reached for the sky. Their poses were mirror reflections of each other, the perfectly tragic bookends for Athena’s main desk.

Carmilla had never realised how gauche the whole thing was until now. She also realised that Laura had her mother’s brow, and her nose.

Carmilla stepped forward onto the foyer floor, and it felt like far more than a single step.

Laura finally tore her eyes from her mother’s holographic image, offering Carmilla a grimace. “I usually avoid the foyer,” Laura explained, even though she hadn’t needed to.

Carmilla nodded, hoping that Laura could see the understanding in her eyes that she had no idea how to turn into words. Laura seemed to decipher it, but Carmilla wasn’t sure if she was truly seeing it, or just seeing what she wanted to, so she pushed it aside and suggested, “Let’s check in.”

Laura nodded and moved towards the desk. Carmilla’s hand hovered over the small of her back, but never made contact, the physical touch that had seemed so easy before, was now a screaming statement in Athena. There were too many eyes here, and it felt like they were all on her.

It didn’t help that once she gave the desk jockey her name, she stared up at Carmilla with wide eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” Carmilla scowled as she drummed her fingers on the desk that had been covered in a faux-wood laminate, “the prodigal son has returned. Give me the room card, lackey.”

The girl practically squeaked, her eyes going from curious to fearful as she offered them their info packs, and Carmilla disdainfully snatched them from her with a sneering, “Thanks.”

“Hey, dudes,” KIrsch started fumblingly, tugging hard on his earlobe as he accepted his pack from Carmilla, “I’m gonna go back down to the bay and check on the Rover. Make sure all the parts are, you know, good.”

Laura put a hand on his arm, and he stilled under it, the nervous energy settling for a brief moment before he nodded at both of them and practically sprinted back to the elevator.

Carmilla was too caught up in managing her own inner conflicts to consider Kirsch’s twitchiness. Had he always been this twitchy? He never spoke about Athena before, or if he had, she hadn’t been listening.

For a moment Laura looked like she was about to ask Carmilla something, but it passed and they headed back to the elevators in silence. Carmilla saw Ell’s blonde hair across the foyer, and her stomach froze as time slowed, but then the woman flicked her hair out of her face and it was someone else.

Carmilla got into the elevator with Laura, sick with that same fractured feeling of disloyalty, which only worsened when the smell of Laura’s hair invaded her senses. There was one other person in the elevator, an older man in a black dress uniform, who hadn’t even glanced at them.

Carmilla was both relieved and annoyed by his presence; it meant that they didn’t have to talk about anything with any weight, but it also meant that Carmilla couldn’t reach for her. In this, the first proper chance they’d had since they arrived, she itched for it. Part of her wondered if it would alleviate her guilt, or make it worse.

The elevator stopped, two floors shy of the one they were staying on, and the man slipped through the gap between them to leave. The doors closed again, and with that the space between Laura and Carmilla seemed to collapse. Suddenly, Laura’s presence felt like it was pressing against Carmilla, and the smell of her hair wasn’t just invading, it was choking. Carmilla had to bunch her hands into fists to stop from pulling Laura in, and the information pack crinkled under her grip.

Presented with the opportunity to touch her, Carmilla froze. With no one else to blame, Carmilla felt the full brunt of her cowardice, and the difference between who she was now and then faded in one dizzying moment.

They reached their floor and Laura strode out of the elevator, seemingly unaware of its effect on Carmilla, but when she turned back to question why Carmilla hadn’t moved, her shoulders were oddly tense. Carmilla looked down to see that Laura’s envelope had crease marks to match hers.

Laura must have noticed Carmilla’s line of sight, because she shifted the envelope behind her bag, and the smile on her face fractured slightly.

Carmilla halved the distance between them in a single step, the elevator doors sliding to a close behind her smoothly. She could do this, she could help ease her-

Someone rounded the corner, and Carmilla’s eyes went to them, furious at the interruption.

They stopped, as did every cell in Carmilla’s body. Except, oddly, her blood, which was now a torrential, deafening storm in her ears.

“Oh,” was the first thing Ell said to Carmilla in three years.

“Fuck,” was Carmilla’s response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it :)
> 
> Join me on tumblr at [churchofyourcurves](http://www.churchofyourcurves.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

In all the versions of seeing Ell for the first time Carmilla had imagined, running away from her had never come up. She was always too full of anger, or too desperate to let go in whatever way she could, and running away just didn’t measure up to everything they’d been through.

But, yeah, that had happened.

She’d left Laura and Ell in the hallway, and their matching bewildered expressions had made her storm straight to the ensuite in the guest cabin she’d been assigned. She hung over the sink, measuring her urge to retch, before finally giving up and just splashing water on her face.

She hadn’t expected that. Not fresh from a seven hour trip, still wearing her grey skins, and covered in a layer of stale sweat from being in a cramped Rover for that long. She examined her face in the mirror; she wasn’t wearing any makeup, she looked tired, and her hair was hanging limply around her face. At least she wouldn’t have to worry that Ell thought she’d put any effort in.

In contrast, Ell looked fantastic. Her hair was shorter now, she was wearing clothes that Carmilla hadn’t recognised (why _that_ jarred her was a mystery), but she looked happy. Happier than she had in the last year of their relationship, when everything had been wracked with tension.

Carmilla couldn’t tell how she felt about that, and _God_ she was sick of ambivalence.

She tore the skins off disdainfully, dropping them to the ground and inching her way into the narrow shower cubicle. She hit the lit green button on the shower cubicle partition and stood in the centre of the cubicle’s dimpled plastic floor as the daily allotment of shower water shot at her from the various jets. The water turned to soapy for a few seconds, and Carmilla closed her eyes. She’d forgotten how unsatisfying the Athena showers were.

The jets returned to water, rinsing her off, and then clicked to a stop. She pressed the red button with white curving lines and the cubicle was filled with a blasting warm wind, until everything except for the soles of her feet was dry.

All that development, and they still hadn’t figured out a way to do the job of drying better than a towel.

Carmilla didn’t bother with clothes as she walked out of the bathroom and dropped onto the bed, wiping the bottom of her feet on the bed sheets. Something dug into her back and she shifted to pull out the crumpled info pack that she’d ripped into for the cabin designation. With a heaved sigh, she dumped the rest of its contents on the bed next to her.

Shuffling through the brochures that were meant for newcomers (which, were they serious? Who put this thing together?) she found the itinerary and skimmed it. There was a few hours until they were scheduled for the meeting with the Engineering department board. Which meant she had some time.

She pulled on a set of clothes quickly, not bothering to check how she looked in them.

(The fact that she could run into Ell again crossed her mind, but she shoved it firmly back out. She refused to put thought into her looks. She refused to primp. She refused to let Ell affect her.)

She scanned the hallway quickly, checking to make sure that it was empty of the blondes, and when she saw that it was she stepped out confidently, as if she hadn’t just been looking around like a guilty animal.

 _Whatever_ , she thought with a spiteful bite of inner bravado, even as her stride was hastened by the ghosts of her past.

\---

The library of Base Athena was very different from what the word suggested. Instead of shelves of books, the library consisted of rows and rows of servers. Stored on these servers was the library, the most comprehensive collection of information on this planet and any other (to human knowledge). It was accessible through any tablet or piece of tech connected to the MarsNet, and it was added to almost every day.

The door to the library - hidden in a rarely ventured area that was known to very few - opened and Carmilla dubiously regarded the dim room and green lasers dancing across the walls. The lasers bounced between the walls and the server casings, and the black metal casing blurred the edges of the fine dots, turning them into fuzzy balls of bright green light.

Carmilla walked further into the library, trying to find the source of the lasers, moving past the first few rows, until she found it halfway into the room.

Sitting on the floor with his back against one row and feet propped against the other, was the librarian. He was staring up at a disco ball that definitely had not been here last time, and shining two green lasers at it, one in each hand. The absent look in his eyes was something that Carmilla recognised and she rolled her eyes, walking into the aisle.

“Hey, tranqhead.”

The librarian’s head lolled to the side, his eyes swimming for a moment before they focused on Carmilla. “I prefer Grand Master of Information,” he declared. Carmilla had forgotten just how poncey his accent was, but she sat down next to him anyway, her back against the opposite casing so that they were facing each other.

The lasers continued to dance around them as he peered at her, searching for something, before he finally said, “You were gone.”

“Yup.”

He hummed, his gaze drifting back up to the disco ball. His eyes went glassy and Carmilla nudged him with the toe of her shoe. “I didn’t come here for the company, Giles.”

He laughed, but then seemed unsure as to if he should have or not. He checked with Carmilla, and then nodded. He carefully handed the lasers over to her, instructing her to keep them aimed at the ball, and after he’d passed them over he seemed to gain some sobriety as he reached into his back pocket with one hand and scratched at his unkempt beard with the other.

“How was Base Hermes?” He pulled out a small plastic bag and popped it open, concentrating on the contents - various differently coloured capsules. “Did you learn something new of yourself?”

Carmilla focused on the disco ball instead of what he was fiddling with, and she scoffed. “Nothing new, just the same old shit.”

He tutted. “You should have gone back to Earth.”

Laura’s face appeared in Carmilla’s mind and the retort died on her tongue. Instead, she made a noncommittal sound.

When she looked back at him, his eyes were sharp on her face. “You seem different.” His hands hesitated. “Are you quite sure you want this?”

“It’s been three years,” she said. When he didn’t look convinced, she snapped, “I haven’t been the one getting high in the library all this time.”

“I wasn’t. Not the whole time.” He scooped something out of the bag, and then pointed up at the disco ball. “I’d not been when I was installing that.”

Carmilla huffed a laugh, her snideness fading as she asked, “Where did you even get a disco ball from?”

He grinned, and for a moment he looked entirely lucid, and Carmilla saw the boy under all the scruff and sunken features. “I have my ways, Miss Karnstein.” The grin lost its youth as he asked, “So what arouses your interest? I have stims, tranqs-”

“Something that will help me focus. And that,” she hesitated, considering her words, before saying, “dulls everything else.”

He examined her. “You could get that from medical.”

“I don’t want Quil,” Carmilla snapped. She checked her outburst and spoke through gritted teeth, “If I go to medical it’ll be on my record.”

“And they will contact Dr Cochrane,” he said, as if that was the reason she didn’t want to do it. And it was, but hearing it come out of his mouth made Carmilla’s anger and suspicion flare.

“How the fuck do you-?” She looked at the servers around them, realising the answer to the question before she finished it. She fixed an admonishing look on the librarian. “That’s protected information.”

“I don’t go _in_ to the files. I simply see them coming in.”

Carmilla rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Jeeves. Are you going to give it to me or what?”

He pulled a clear capsule out of the bag; his fingers long and precise, although when he held it out in his palm his hands shook. Carmilla reached for it and he closed his hand around the capsule, holding his other hand out. “You know the price, Miss Karnstein.”

“Fine,” she grunted and put down the lasers so she could bring her palm tablet out of her pocket. The green laser light stopped bouncing off the walls, and the room fell into a dull, dark state, with the blinking lights of the servers the only visible illumination in the room. She pulled up the video logs from the climber Rover’s development, and added the librarian to the access list.

She showed him the screen and his replying smile looked manic in the light of the screen, the glow highlighting the hollowness of his cheeks and deep trenches under his eyes. The hand holding the capsule opened again and Carmilla snatched it off him. “You better not be doing weird things with those logs.”

“Of course not,” he said, looking affronted at the suggestion as he scooped the lasers up from the ground and fixed them back on the disco ball, returning the walls to their lit up state. “On a planet with no currency, information is invaluable.”

Carmilla rolled the capsule between her fingers, examining the clear crystal powder inside it.

“Do you still struggle with dry swallowing or shall I fetch you some water?” the librarian asked and Carmilla bared her teeth in response.

“There’s my favourite snarky Brit,” Carmilla fired back, before swallowing the capsule using her saliva and bitterness.

He gave her a measured smile. “You flatter me, Miss Karnstein.”

She hummed and let her head rest against the server as she looked up at the disco ball, watching the light play across the mirrored sides. It wasn’t a normal disco ball, that was clear, it had been cobbled together in a messy way, the mirrored segments were different sizes and shapes, and there were some gaps, but it did the job well enough.

She felt the familiar roll start deep within her muscles, and knew that it wouldn’t be kicking in yet, but the act of taking something made her so much more aware of her body. She analysed each sensation to try and detect if it was normal or heightened, and doing so made it feel heightened.

“I didn’t think we’d see each other again after what happened.”

“Believe me,” she said, letting out a long breath and feeling the air pass through her lungs, “I wasn’t planning to.” She thought back to that tribunal meeting, but the usual anger that accompanied it wasn’t present, instead she felt like it had happened to someone else, and that felt okay.

“How did you get your supply?” she asked. “They sent back the source.”

Three years ago the source had been a chemist, who was charged with drug manufacture and sent back to Earth in cuffs. The Mars governing body preferred to keep any illegalities well under the radar, for fear of funding being pulled, but the chemist had proved more trouble than he was worth, and the perfect scapegoat for the growing number of ‘incidents’.

The librarian laughed lightly, but with the cadence of bitterness. “Where there is a demand there shall be a supply. And those who fall on the wrong side of Quilazepine demand quite strongly.”

Quilazepine, or Quil, was the prescription drug that Medical handed out like Tic Tacs to those who worked too hard, and stressed even harder. It was also highly addictive.

He spoke with such a knowing weariness that Carmilla wondered and, half a moment later, asked, “When did you come over?”

He seemed caught off guard by the question, not only by the topic, but also at the fact she’d asked at all. Instead of surprise, she only felt curiosity.

“Why?” he asked in a hard voice. Then, the hardness crumbled and shame replaced it. “I’m sorry, I-” He shook his head and put the lasers down, letting the room fall back into dimness. He pulled out the plastic bag again, along with a glass tablet that had been tucked between two of the server casings. He balanced the tablet on top of his bent knees, screen down so that the opaque glass back was facing up, before digging out a red capsule and easing it open with shaking hands. He tipped out the red powder onto the glass, and bent forward to take it in with one long loud sniff.

Carmilla watched him detachedly as he flung his head back, his fingers pinching his nostrils a few times as he dragged in another sharp sniff. He relaxed against the servers again, before wiping his finger across the surface, and rubbing it along his gums. Once he was done, his attention returned to Carmilla. “Sorry,” he apologised as he put the tablet away. He seemed more lucid now than he had before, and his eyes focused on Carmilla with a new understanding.

Carmilla felt the cold metal of the server at her back, and it was like she was melting into it. She dropped her palms to the floor, and she wondered if it was the floor or her who was moving. Or if anything was moving at all.

“I came in the first phase.”

At first, Carmilla couldn’t remember the question that he was answering, but it swept through her very suddenly and she stared at him. “You were on Hera.”

“I was.”

Carmilla turned over this new piece of information in her mind. It rearranged the image of the librarian that she had in her head, reshaping the facts she knew, and she looked at him like they’d only just met. The knowledge flew through her mind, recolouring all her memories of him.

They fell into silence, both easing into their respective climbs, and he returned the lasers to the disco ball.

“Would you do me a favour?” he asked in an odd voice, which to Carmilla sounded very far away. She looked down from the disco ball to him. The green hue of the lasers brought out the slope of the librarian’s nose, and sharpened the details of the bush of tangled hair along his jaw. He didn’t look away from the mirrored ball as he said, “Don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

Carmilla’s mind went to the holographic statues in the foyer, to Laura first telling her about her mother, to the way her Environmental tutor used to say ‘Hera’ in a hushed voice thick with longing. Then, she processed the second half of the sentence; because of course he would be a walking billboard for the grief of Hera, attracting pity and attention wherever he went.

Suddenly, she saw the library for what it was - a safe haven. And, as she felt her heartbeat start to pick up in her chest, she looked at the green lights spinning slowly around the room and the image of the aurora played across her memory, superimposing over her vision and echoing the patterns of the lasers.

“I won’t.”

\---

By the time Carmilla reached the meeting room Laura and Kirsch were already waiting outside. They both looked unsettled, Laura kept checking her palm tablet, while Kirsch was pacing the short hallway, which was only two paces wide for him, so it looked ridiculous.

Laura was wearing a starched white uniform that Carmilla had never seen her in - hadn’t even known she’d owned it. The pants were perfectly creased, tucked into them was a white double-breasted shirt, and completing the look - a spotless lab coat. Next to her, Kirsch looked absurd in his stained and open jumpsuit, which revealed his equally grease- and sweat-stained singlet underneath.

Laura looked up as Carmilla approached, her face tight but easing slightly at the sight of her. “Where have you been?”

Carmilla felt the sweetness of the buzz start to fade at the two people staring at her - Laura righteous and Kirsch anxious. “We still have five minutes.”

“It’s a meeting with the Engineering board, you’re meant to turn up early,” Laura hissed, and Carmilla instantly knew that her reaction had nothing to do with the meeting.

“I wasn’t with Ell.”

Laura opened and closed her mouth several times at Carmilla’s blunt honesty, and Carmilla felt nothing at having surrendered it. Usually, it would have felt presumptuous, assuming that Laura would have cared, but now it simply felt true and judging from Laura’s reaction, it had been.

She turned to Kirsch. “Nice outfit.” He grimaced, wincing under the weight of what he assumed was sarcasm, but she continued, “Seriously. You’re a mechanic. What’s the point of pretending like you aren’t?”

He smiled, lips quirking unsurely before his hands flexed and he shoved them deep into his pockets and mumbled, “Thanks, bro.”

The door slid open and a woman that Carmilla recognised, but had no idea what her name was, took in the sight of them. She wore her black hair in a sharp bob that was shorter at the back than the front, and peered at them through thick-rimmed black glasses that weren’t necessary under the Mars Medical system, which would have reimbursed any corrective costs. She focused on Carmilla, and something in her eyes hardened. “Miss Karnstein?”

Carmilla nodded and started to walk into the room, but was stopped by Laura stepping forward haltingly.

“I’ll see you after?” Laura asked, and there was something in her eyes that made Carmilla wish she hadn’t left her in the hallway earlier on.

Carmilla offered a smirk that was a fraction too broad, which was clear from the uneasy way Laura received it. She reined it back, and nodded. “Wish me luck.”

She strode into the room, with Kirsch in tow, his shoulders bowed so that he didn’t look his usual ridiculous height.

She thought she heard Laura whisper, “Good luck,” as the door closed again.

The room was unsurprisingly stark, a reflection of the clean whites, silvers and glass of the rest of the base. The ceiling was only a few inches above Kirsch’s unstooped height, and along the left side of the room was a floor to ceiling window, while the right had a SmartWall so people could bring up things from the MarsNet or write by gesturing at it. A long table took up the middle of the room, and there were already four people sitting down at the far end of it.

The woman who had let them in joined the other four, and they all looked at Carmilla and Kirsch expectantly. The woman at the head of the table - Dr Danbi - had been the Head of Engineering since the department had been established, and Carmilla had only been in the same room with her on three occasions before. Dr Danbi had grey hair, cut short so that it stuck out from her head like she had just been electric shocked, and almond-shaped eyes so dark they were almost black. Prominent smile lines creased her face, but Carmilla had never seen her smile.

To her left, was the course coordinator, a simpering woman whose name Carmilla had forgotten, who looked like she would faint at the slightest of stress, and yet managed the Mars Engineering course with a dismissive ease. Her blonde hair had been plaited, and went halfway down her back, and the youthful hairstyle and orange lipstick she wore only highlighted her age, emphasizing the puckered bags under her eyes and sagging skin around her jaw.

To the Head’s right was Carmilla’s old supervisor, Jackson, a half-Maori half-Malaysian man with attentive amber eyes and a sloping flatness to his face that perfectly matched his huge stature - he was just as tall as Kirsch but with broader shoulders and a full roundness that was largely muscle. Next to him...

She was sure that she would have felt anger if she wasn’t currently loaded up on whatever the librarian had given her. He’d shaved his stupid moustache since the last time she’d seen him, and his dirty blonde hair that used to hang shaggy around his ears had been cut short now, so he looked less ‘90s programmer working out of a garage’ and more like a proper adult. He was older than her, but his clean-shaven face left him looking several years younger.

“Carmilla,” he said, and it sounded like an apology.

Carmilla searched for the rage she expected to burn through her stomach, but instead she just fixed a crooked smile to her face and saluted the board. “Howdy,” she greeted them, not even caring that it was the first time in her life she’d said that word. She shoved aside one of the chairs down their end of the table, pulling herself onto the tabletop and smacking her hands together. “Shall we?”

“So,” the woman who let them in spoke first, her mouth twisted with distaste, “why did you summon us?”

Carmilla suddenly remembered where she knew her from; she’d been at the tribunal, hanging around the back wall and shooting daggers at Carmilla from behind the Athena’s disciplinary board.

“Dr Kim,” Jackson warned in a low voice, and Carmilla watched the tension ripple through the group. Clearly her presence had caused some disagreements, and seeing the echo of that almost entertained Carmilla.

The use of Dr Kim’s last name seemed to have the desired effect on her, and she pursed her lips tightly, deepening the wrinkles around her mouth.

Carmilla spun so that she was facing the board head on, crossing her legs and not caring that her boots were on the shiny table, as she pulled her palm tablet out and flicked the blueprints onto the SmartWall.

She was half an hour into explaining the improvements when the course coordinator leaned forward and interrupted, “Sorry, sorry.” She eyed Kirsch pointedly, who was making his chair squeak with each bounce of his leg. “Who is he and why is he here?”

Carmilla couldn’t remember if she’d introduced him or not, she’d been talking about the climbing Rover at such a steady rate that she couldn’t really remember what she’d said, just had a vague feeling of it.

“Kirsch is the mechanic who helped me.”

The course coordinator looked unmoved. “So?”

“So I give credit to the people who contribute to something.”

Under normal circumstances (when she wasn’t running her hands over the material of her pants just because it felt fun against her palms), she would have made this comment with all the intended bite. As it was, she made it and then realised the irony when she saw Douchenozzle shift in his chair uncomfortably. It almost made her want to laugh, because he was so very uncomfortable, while all her emotions felt like cottony clouds that she couldn’t quite reach.

She redirected her attention back to the SmartWall where a 3D rendering of the climber Rover was slowly revolving on the spot. “Where was I?”

The meeting went on for three more hours, with the board grilling her on every aspect of the Rover. Jackson looked thoroughly impressed by the end of it, but all of the board women kept their faces carefully blank. Douchenozzle hadn’t managed to scrounge up a question, and there was something in his smug face that made it obvious he thought he was doing her a favour. She was fairly certain he just hadn’t thought of an intelligent enough question.

It was going as well as Carmilla had expected - that was, brilliantly - until the end of the meeting.

“We’ll review all of your files and get back to you in a week,” Dr Danbi stated with a small nod.

Carmilla brushed off her hands, shoving herself off the table. Two steps towards the door, she swung back around and said, “Oh, also-”

The five board members looked at her as one, ranging from Dr Kim’s suspicion, to Douchenozzle’s tentativeness.

“I think a mechanic who helped create this mech should get a position at Athena, don’t you?”

Kirsch made a strangled sound behind her at the same time that the board’s eyes landed on him.

“Mr Kirsch, would this be something you’re interested in?” Dr Danbi asked, as the course coordinator looked satisfied that she’d guessed there was a purpose behind Kirsch’s presence.

“I-” His eyes flicked around the room frantically before he choked out a stumbling yet emphatic, “ _No_.”

Carmilla rounded on him, the rest of the room inconsequential as she felt her goal ripped from her by the one person she didn’t expect it from. “What do you mean ‘no’?” Having all her work and effort dismissed brought her already unsteady come down from the capsule to a hard landing, letting all her repressed fury to the surface.

Kirsch’s eyes darted from her, to the other side of the room, but Carmilla didn’t _care_ what he was looking at. “Bro,” he spoke in a nervous whisper, “I don’t want to work here. I _chose_ Hermes.”

“You- then why the _fuck_ are we here?!?”

“I don’t know?” he said, his eyebrows knotted with confusion. “You said you wanted to-”

“For _you_ , you dumbass.”

“I never asked-” Then his mouth twisted and he asked, “You think I needed help getting assigned here? That I was so dumb they tried to get rid of me by sending me to Hermes?”

Someone from the other side of the room cleared their throat loudly, drawing Carmilla out of the rage that had been aimed squarely at the mechanic, realising that there were five pairs of eyes on them.

“Perhaps you’d like to take this conversation elsewhere?” Dr Kim suggested, and there was something triumphant the curve of her smile that stirred up Carmilla’s anger again. She clenched her fists and strode out of the room, because homicide wasn’t a Dr Cochrane-approved coping mechanism.

She ignored Kirsch’s calls, beating him to the elevator and tapping a furious rhythm on the ‘Close’ button so that the doors closed in his face before he could reach out to stop them. There was a group of fresh-faced newbies already in there and they looked at Carmilla with wide-eyed curiosity, to which she snarled, “What?”

The fear in their eyes as they snapped to attention away from her would have usually offered her some relief from her anger, but it just served to irritate her more.

The elevator reached her floor and she left it swiftly, ignoring the titters that broke out behind her, because apparently Earth’s brightest couldn’t wait until the damn elevator doors closed before they exploded into gossip.

Carmilla stalked down the corridor, and the idea that Ell might be here occurred to her, but for once she almost ached for it. She could tear into Ell without guilt, rip wounds into her that mirrored her own. Dredge up every piece of resentment she’d gathered over the years, which had been collected carefully like keepsakes for a moment such as this.

What she hadn’t expected was Laura sitting down outside her door.

Laura looked up, her face pulled into a sunny expression that rang hollow. “Hey, neighbour!”

Carmilla tried to confine the fire curling through her body, but the flames licked at her skin and dared her to let them out. “What do you want?”

She expected a retort from Laura, but the scientist just smiled more determinedly, sharpening the edges of her smile. “How did it go?”

“Fucking,” she elongated the word, taking pleasure in how the hard sounds felt coming out of her mouth, “brilliant.”

“What happened?”

Carmilla pressed the room card to the sensor on the right, and walked into her room. She really didn’t want to blow up, but Laura was following her into the room as if there had been an offer, and the room was already small enough without there being two people.

“Did you know Kirsch didn’t want to be assigned here?” Carmilla asked, as if this was a conspiracy against her.

Laura fell back slightly, and Carmilla couldn’t tell if it was because she was surprised or she was thinking ‘ _duh_ ’.

“Well,” Laura said carefully, “he wasn’t _thrilled_ about being here.”

“Then why didn’t he say anything?!” Carmilla exploded.

“Because you’re so approachable?” Laura aske. Then, seeing Carmilla’s expression darken, she quickly changed the topic, “Is that why you did this?”

“Well I didn’t do it for me.”

“Why not?”

Those two words touched a nerve that had already felt raw to Carmilla - _“This is about furthering your professional career”_ \- and she growled, “Because I- I don’t- I’m not that person!” Her frustration grew at her verbal stumble, it had scrambled her words in her brain and making the mistake angered her more.

“Okay,” Laura stated simply.

Carmilla felt the heat of her anger transition into confusion, so suddenly that she felt at a loss. The shadow and urge of anger still remained, but without any of the drive behind it. “Okay?” she asked, her breathing laboured and her brow creased.

“You’re not that person,” Laura echoed. “Not exactly a shocking revelation.”

Words failed Carmilla as she stared at the scientist, even the ghost of her anger had faded now. Laura looked back at her as if she hadn’t just said something that felt life changing to Carmilla. Before she could try to recover her ability to speak, the door buzzer sounded and they both stared at it.

Laura was blocking Carmilla’s path to the door, so she sat on the bed to let Carmilla pass, tucking her legs up so that Carmilla didn’t have to step over her. When she finally got there, she opened to door to Ell.

Ell’s eyes dropped to Laura, something in her expression shifted for a moment, before she fixed a polite smile on her face. “I’m so sorry, I’m interrupting, I’ll come back later.”

“It’s alright.” Laura stood, taking pains to not touch Carmilla as she did. “I’ll go.”

“Wait-” Carmilla reached for Laura, although her hand stopped short.

“It’s okay,” Laura reassured her, and Carmilla wondered how she sounded so honest. “I’ll go find Kirsch.”

“Right.” Carmilla remembered yelling at him and felt something that could have passed for guilt. “Tell him...”

“I will.”

Then, in full view of Ell, Laura leaned forward and kissed Carmilla on the cheek. Something in Carmilla melted, although she wasn’t sure if it was from the normalcy of the affection, the underlying meaning directed at both Carmilla and Ell, or the sensation of Laura’s lips against her cheek, which replayed in her head again and again as Laura edged past her and through the door.

Carmilla fought back the urge to smile, and then she settled her attention on Ell. The hurt that she had been itching to bestow on her not so long ago had left, and now she felt only weariness as she took in the sight of her ex. “What is it, Ell?”

“Can I come in?”

Carmilla thought of how crowded the room was with Laura, and knew that she wouldn’t be able to bear it with Ell. “Let’s go to the rec hall.”

Ell’s face fell another fraction, but Carmilla just gestured for her to move so that she could leave the room. She might not feel like ripping into her, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable being close to her.

A hugely uncomfortable and silent walk later (during which Carmilla realised that Ell walked the same, and still had the nervous tic of smoothing her hair down with her palms), they arrived at the rec hall.

Intended for people during their down time, the rec hall was like a bar crossed with a diner crossed with a games room.

Along the left wall was a faux mahogany bar, with tall stools topped by deep red cushions, and rows of glass shelves behind the bar, which were full of holographic alcohol bottles. Instead, the drinks came out of the self-service taps that rose up at even intervals across the length of the bar. They’d been done in the style, so that their pipes were a burnished gold colour, but instead of a turning spigot, there was a fingerprint sensor. Each person was allocated one unit of alcohol per weekday and three on weekends, not that anyone was keen for more than that, because the taste was so bad that there was a prevalent rumour it was the runoff from the water purification system.

In contrast to the classic bar, the right wall had three strips of blue, pink and green pastel lights running down it in an effort to emulate a diner, with plastic red booths and mini jukeboxes that had access to the songs on the MarsNet database. However, without the tall milkshakes topped with cherries, or greasy cheeseburgers and fries to complete the look, the diner style had always seemed mocking to Carmilla.

The back wall was full of games, from the Holo-Pool table that used AccuPhysics balls that remained true to Earth’s gravity, the differently themed Visual Reality (or VR) games, and the more classic dartboard. The VR games faced the wall so that people couldn’t see the ridiculous faces that those playing were making, although their movements were fodder enough.

The clash of all these different styles shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did.

The rec hall was fairly empty, there were two people playing pool, nursing their single allotted drinks as they quietly discussed the game, and a group sitting at a booth in the back corner. It wasn’t late enough for it to get busy, plus being a Monday it was an unofficial student night. They would come in after they finished their intern shifts to sneak in a drink and mess around with the VR games before they’d have to get up early for class.

Carmilla selected a spot at the front corner of the bar, jammed between the counter and the bathroom entrance. It was far enough from the rest of the people in the hall that they wouldn’t be bothered. The vague strain of music came from the booth, but the melody was indistinguishable.

She grabbed one of the plastic tumblers from the stack and lined it up with the tap in front of her. As she pressed her fingerprint to the tap’s sensor the clean sound of a break came from the pool table and she glanced over to see the woman with a tattoo curling around her forearm high-five the blond with professor spectacles. He’d sunk two balls off the break, and was lining his shot up for the third one when Ell cleared her throat, drawing Carmilla’s attention back to her.

“What?” Carmilla asked. The edge had returned to her tone, and Ell winced although they both knew it was just a shadow of what it could have been.

“I heard about the meeting.”

Carmilla stared at the ring on Ell’s finger. It was platinum, even though she’d always talked about gold to Carmilla.

“You didn’t invite me to the wedding.” Carmilla swallowed a mouthful of her drink. It burned on the way down, the artificial additives doing nothing to curb the wet dog taste.

Ell blinked. Apparently she’d forgotten the shifting nature of talking to Carmilla when there was tension between them. Then it clicked, and she turned so she was facing Carmilla front on, and her hands dropped into her lap, her right hand fiddling with her ring. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Carmilla said, baring her teeth, “don’t apologise for the happiest day of your life.”

“Carmilla-”

“Fine,” Carmilla gave in, because the one apology had grated on her nerves enough to elicit her old frustrations, and she didn’t want to have another fight in the rec hall. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

Ell started to spin the ring with her thumb and forefinger, making it glint in the light. She answered the question with a quiet, “I didn’t cheat on you.”

“Depends on your definition.”

“I didn’t _do_ anything with him while we were together.”

“You prioritised him over me,” Carmilla accused. “You re _lied_ on him.”

“Because you weren’t there!” Ell exploded, an angry flush blooming across her cheeks. As quickly as she exploded, she shut down, checking if the other people in the rec hall had heard her. She continued in a low, defensive voice, “You left me a long time before we broke up.”

Carmilla took a long sip of her drink. Three years and they were still having the same fight, trying to lay the blame on the other person, neither of them willing to wear it themselves. _Fuck_.

Ell snatched one of the tumblers and poured herself a drink. Carmilla raised an eyebrow, and wondered if this was another thing that had changed, but Ell’s disgusted reaction to the alcohol proved it wasn’t a regular habit.

Carmilla almost wanted to laugh at the idea that she’d driven her to drink, because it would be the perfect disastrous instalment to their poisonous relationship.

“When did it happen?” Carmilla asked, and Ell shot her a look that was part questioning and part suspicious. Carmilla gestured to the ring with the bottom of her tumbler, because she knew that the word ‘wedding’ or ‘marriage’ would only come out cruel.

Ell started shuffling the ring between the knuckle and middle joint of her finger. “6 months ago.”

Well, at least they’d waited. Carmilla didn’t know if she’d been expecting that to make her feel better or worse, but the knowledge sat uncomfortably in her mind; a piece of information that she never needed or wanted to know, but had asked for regardless. Her sense of masochism was truly unparalleled.

Discomfort poured off Ell as she settled a smile on her face and asked with a fake lightness to her voice, “That girl, in your cabin, are you-?”

“Why did you come to see me?”

Ell shut her mouth audibly, and it was clear what she took Carmilla’s subject change as.

“Teddy-”

Carmilla snorted. “Ridiculous name.”

Ell continued, ignoring her, “-told me about the meeting. He said you seemed upset.”

“Because he knows my moods so well,” Carmilla muttered.

“You aren’t subtle when you’re upset,” Ell pointed out.

Carmilla turned the tumbler in her hand and regarded the remnants of her drink; she only had about an inch of liquid left, she’d squandered it too early in this conversation and the only thing she’d gotten for her troubles was a nasty aftertaste in her mouth. “Did you change your last name?”

Ell was silent for so long that Carmilla stole a glance at her, and saw that the woman was quietly upset, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. Finally, she answered softly, “You know I always hated my last name.”

Carmilla hummed, swirling the liquid in her glass. “Larkin,” she spat out his last name as if it was a swear word. “Shitty last name.”

“Oh and Karnstein is so much better?” Ell fired back, but instead of any fire there was just a cautiously joking tone, a small prod that echoed their past banter.

“Better than Larkin.”

Ell laughed, short but full, and it held just as much relief as amusement. Carmilla let a smirk slip over her lips as she took a small, considering sip of her drink. The moment between them lapsed silently, the bitter of the bittersweet making itself known as they both acknowledged the implication of Ell taking her last name instead of his.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Ell said, her voice soft and gentle in the wake of their tentative ceasefire.

“And you assumed that I’d be okay with seeing you?” Carmilla asked, pulling up the heart of another of their old arguments. “Or were you more worried about relieving your guilt?”

Ceasefires never lasted long with them; sooner or later one of them brushed past the exposed nerves of another unresolved argument, and things between them would catch fire again like a pile of kindling.

Hurt crossed Ell’s face, but it had more to do with how accurate Carmilla’s words had been than anything else. Carmilla had always been an unforgiving mirror for all of Ell’s flaws, but falling back into this pattern felt wrong, and bitter, and empty, and _exhausting_. So, instead, Carmilla downed the rest of her drink, choked back a gag, and placed the tumbler on the bar with a definitive clack.

“Thanks,” Carmilla said, and the word didn’t feel as impossible as it always had before. “I guess.” She eased herself out of the stool without scraping it against the floor, and tried to decide if there was something else to say to the woman she had once shared so much with.

Finally, she settled on, “I’m good,” and meant it.

Ell nodded. “Good,” and she meant it too.

\---

Carmilla made it as far as the visitor cabin hallway before realising where Laura and Kirsch would be. She doubled back into the elevator, and rode it all the way down to the entrance bay feeling oddly light, as if something had been stripped from her and she might float away at any moment.

When the elevator doors opened she saw Laura bickering with a different door tech about whether they had clearance to perform mechanical work there. Laura was facing away from her, gesturing madly, while the door tech looked stressed out, his auburn hair sticking out at weird angles as he continued to run his hand through it in frustration.

“I have to keep the bay floor free for incoming traffic!”

“What traffic?” Laura demanded. “Show me the manifest.”

He clutched the tablet to his chest, affronted. “No way!”

Carmilla stepped out of the elevator. “You better listen to her, Tech-ster. She’s maddeningly stubborn.”

Laura spun around to face Carmilla, joy and then unsurety and then hesitant excitement all flashed across her face. “Carm,” she said, and it sounded like ‘you’re here’ and ‘thank you’ all at once.

Carmilla smiled. “Hey, Cupcake.” The pet name slipped out, innocuous and natural.

Laura didn’t comment on it, but the hesitance faded to full-blown excitement, and Carmilla was struck (again) by how stunning she was.

Laura caught herself from the moment before Carmilla did, and she half turned so that she was side-on to both Carmilla and the door tech. “Can you please explain to _Roger_ that our mechanical work is totally fine to be done here?”

Carmilla regarded the door tech who didn’t look much older than 21, his green eyes flicked from Laura to Carmilla, looking frustrated that Laura had called upon reinforcements. Carmilla continued to regard the door tech before realising that he didn’t recognise her. _Huh, refreshing._

“Alright, Roger,” she pronounced his name with clinical precision, “we have two options here. Option one: you let the mechanical work continue while you look the other way. Option two: you don’t and I get the head of Engineering down here so you can explain to her why you’ve delayed an important project.”

His resolve faltered, but he attempted to push back with, “But, the Workshop-”

“How about you let the important people know the ‘why’, hmm?” Carmilla patted him on the shoulder patronisingly as she passed him. Laura followed after her, doing all but sticking her tongue out at the door tech.

They fell into step as he returned to his station, muttering to himself as he cradled his tablet.

“Is everything okay?” Laura asked, casual in a way that made it clear she already knew the answer, but was offering Carmilla a chance to talk about it.

“Well,” Carmilla said wryly, “I didn’t kill her.”

“Good start.”

Carmilla smirked. “I thought so.”

They approached the corner that Kirsch had cordoned off with small glowing red safety markers, and Laura slowed her pace so Carmilla matched her.

“You should talk to him.”

Carmilla’s reaction must have immediately appeared on her face, because Laura added quickly, “I’m not saying you trade life stories, but-”

“Okay,” Carmilla interrupted, before she could think about it, before she had to think about it, because she could see the importance of it to Laura.

Laura’s eyes held Carmilla’s, and Carmilla knew that she’d said the right thing. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

If kissing was a thing that they did, then they would have done it here, but instead Laura just gave her an understated smile and stepped back, allowing Carmilla to move towards where Kirsch had tucked himself under the back tyres.

“Kirsch.”

There was a thump as he smacked against the underside of the Rover and swore loudly, easing himself out from under the axle, holding his forehead and peering up at Carmilla. His eyes were skittish, shoulders drawn tight and hands twisting around his wrench. “Hey bro,” he greeted her in the least enthusiastic voice she’d ever heard him use.

 _Crap_. Laura’s nudge had been enough to get her here, but finding words to say was another matter entirely. So, she just started by stating a fact, “You chose Hermes.”

He nodded.

She had really been hoping he’d take it from there, but apparently not. She ignored the way her discomfort felt like it was fusing the vertebrae in her spine together. “You don’t like Athena?”

The skittishness hadn’t left his eyes, drawing his eyebrows together as his gaze bounced from the floor, up to Carmilla, and back down again. He shrugged, his eyes sliding to the side.

Carmilla let out a noisy breath and dropped into a messy sitting position on the floor, sick of this whole animal whisperer thing she had to do. He bucked back at her sudden movement and she held her hands up. “Look, I’m not good at this one-sided conversation thing. I’m a crappy conversationalist.”

His mouth quirked and he met her eyes.

The small victory would have felt pitiful under normal circumstances, but she took as much accomplishment as she could out of it, and used that to say, “I’m sorry. I should have asked, you know, what you wanted, I guess.” She made a face between a scowl and a grimace. “I didn’t think anyone except for me would choose Hermes.”

His expression only contained wonder now, as his eyes stopped shuffling away from her timidly. “ _Every_ one chose to be there.” Then, as if he’d never lost his confidence to speak, “Dude, Hermes isn’t a punishment. It’s, like, a safe haven.”

Hearing Kirsch echo the words she’d thought about the library threw her, and all at once it felt like everything slipped into place - Laura’s words about loss; the librarian asking if she’d learned something at Hermes; and the aurora that he’d created with drugs, lasers, and a shotty disco ball.

Kirsch continued with his regained voice, “Athena always made me feel dumb. I’m good with my hands, but books and exams and stuff confuse me. I want to be here, I do,” he said emphatically, and Carmilla could hear him repeating his past words, begging the Athena Mechanic Board to let him stay. “I _want_ to do stuff. But, I come to Athena and I just-” He finally let his hands fall open and they started to shake so hard that they knocked the wrench out of his lap.

He clenched his hands into fists again, and Carmilla felt guilt and affection for him bloom as one, twined together and clamping her throat shut.

“They’re assholes anyway,” she said in a watery voice that they both ignored. “Fuck Athena.”

He looked up at her and a smile started to grow, apprehensive at first, but then huge once she mirrored it with her own. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice quiet as if they were sharing a secret, but eyes full of wicked vehemence, “ _fuck_ Athena.”

His enthusiasm returned to their normal levels, she realised how much of a relief it was to have him provide enough energy for both of them. With their dynamic restored, she reached out with her foot and bumped the sole of her boot against his leg. “Let’s go home.”

His smile was equal parts relieved and eager as he nodded, getting to his feet and hurriedly wiping his hand on his overalls, offering Carmilla a hand up. His hand was still stained with grease, the lines of his palm coated in black, but Carmilla took it anyway and let him yank her to her feet.

She was still trying to recover her shoulder joint when she rounded the corner to where Laura was studying her tablet screen.

“Hey,” Carmilla said, pulling Laura’s attention from her tablet, “we’re gonna go back to Hermes.”

Laura’s expression fractured and Carmilla felt it in her chest.

“What’s wrong?” Carmilla asked, glancing down at the tablet accusingly.

“I can’t go.”

“You-” Carmilla stopped, her blood running cold. “Did they revoke your approval?”

Laura shook her head. “No, they...” She bit her lip and her eyes dropped, unable to hold Carmilla’s gaze. “I’m being assigned to Demeter.”

Demeter was the base due for completion soon, developed specifically to help further research and development on cultivating plant life on Mars, the next big drive of the Martian colonies. It made sense that they’d want a botanist that was willing to go above and beyond for the science. It made sense that they’d want Laura.

“Don’t go,” slipped out of Carmilla’s mouth before she could stop it. Into those two words was everything she’d wished she could say to her parents, everything she’d never been able to say to Ell, everything that no one had ever seen.

Laura stared at Carmilla as if she knew that, and Carmilla felt herself break and break and break again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo, yeah.
> 
> I'm gonna be heading to Europe for the next three weeks, and won't be back until Jan 3, so it might be a while until I get another update up because I'll be off freezing my Australian ass off in the snow (hopefully!) Apologies for the delay, and for the ending, I swear I didn't mean for it to end that cruelly.
> 
> Anyways, happy holidays to everyone! I hope you have a wonderful end of the year, and a brilliant start to the next one.
> 
> I may be on tumblr at random spurts, so if you want to contact me, or yell at me I guess, then just head over to [churchofyourcurves](http://churchofyourcurves.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry about the delay, life got pretty hectic. Anyways, enjoy!

Message: Laura Hollis

Good morning! They’ve finally fixed  
the sealing on Pod 3 so that we can  
start work on the new crop dev...

Carmilla cracked an eye open to look at the message preview on her palm tablet screen, before grunting and rolling over in her bed so that she faced the alcove in the wall. Unlike the other bunks, hers wasn’t decorated - at least not in the traditional sense. She pressed the pad of her finger against the penny in the corner of the alcove, and ran the tips of her fingers along the book whose pages had been so thoroughly leafed through that the edge of the book was far thicker than the spine.

The rest of the bunks were empty. Carmilla could hear the other four having breakfast in the eating area. The redhead scientist was still here, which made the absence of Laura even harder to ignore. Carmilla glanced back over at her tablet - it had lit up again with the same message notification - Laura was making it hard enough all on her own.

Laura would send her at least one message everyday. It would detail her day, or what she was doing, and ask Carmilla questions about her day, or what she was up to, or how she felt, as if Carmilla would reply.

She hadn’t. Not to Laura’s first, lengthy apology, and not to any of the casual messages that followed. Of course, Laura could see that she’d read them, and that seemed to be enough for the scientist.

Carmilla wasn’t withholding her replies out of anger. Although, yeah, she was angry, and betrayed, and frustratingly melancholic - but she also understood. However, understanding wasn’t enough to help her reply to Laura’s bright, ridiculously normal messages. Any time she tried to start a reply she got as far as “Hey” and that was it.

She swiped her tablet open to read Laura’s latest message, which included a selfie Laura had taken of herself in Pod 3 with the new crop they were planting. The scientist had a broad grin on her face, and was sticking her thumb up at the camera. Her hands were still covered in a film of dirt, and several strands of hair had escaped her ponytail so that they framed her face, catching the light and creating a bright halo.

Carmilla saved the photo and locked the tablet, slipping it into her pocket as she rolled out of the bunk and started on her daily muscle preservation exercises.

\---

Carmilla walked through the foyer of Hermes on the way to the Mech wing when she was clipped on the shoulder by Kirsch’s elbow as he pulled on the space suit pants.

“Shit dude, sorry!” he apologised, holding a hand out to make sure she was alright while his other one held up his unsecured pants that had a long tear down the inner thigh. He’d caught them on a Rover’s tow bar in his second week at Hermes and had to patch it with several lengths of electrical tape. Both of the large suits were in a similar state of disrepair, something the Commander hadn’t forgiven him for, given that they were the same ridiculous size and had to share them.

Carmilla dodged back from his hand and eyed the suit. “Where are you going?”

The scientist sidled their way in (from where, Carmilla had no idea), replying, “I need to go out and gather some new samples.”

Carmilla didn’t shift her attention away from Kirsch; the only evidence that she’d heard the scientist was a darkening in her eyes. “I need you here.”

Kirsch looked from Carmilla to the scientist helplessly, clearly struggling with the decision. Carmilla’s eyes darkened more.

“Fine,” the scientist muttered, as if _Carmilla_ was the one being a pain, “I’ll go on my own.”

Without looking at them, Carmilla said, “Two people in the Climber. Minimum.”

“It’ll be f-”

Carmilla wheeled around on the scientist so suddenly that they took a step back, making their suit gently whoosh. She snarled, “You better not be about to say ‘fine’.”

The scientist didn’t say anything, but their eyebrows shot up their forehead.

Carmilla thought they looked ridiculous.

She pushed her way past the two of them while saying sourly, “I made the damn thing. When I say two people minimum, it’s a two people minimum.”

She heard Kirsch apologise to the scientist quickly before jogging after her, each step punctuated with the whispery sound of the suit material brushing past against itself. He managed to make it into the Mech wing just before the doors closed, and when she shot him a look over her shoulder his entire body was drooping with guilt.

 _Ugh_. Carmilla grabbed the metal joint from the bench and threw it at him, which he caught with surprising ease given that he still looked like a pet that’d done something they weren’t supposed to.

“Sprinklers are having trouble when it hits night time.”

He examined the joint she’d thrown at him. “You think it’s the joints?”

“Maybe,” Carmilla replied mildly. “How do those do with temperature drops?”

He started to walk towards her at the bench, all the remorse gone as he focused on the joint, examining the model that she’d put together to replicate the ones they had at Demeter.

“Are they using these above or below ground?”

“Above.”

“Huh.” He made a sound in the back of his throat as he squinted at the joint, examining the connecting parts with a determined focus.

He started to talk out loud about the benefits and drawbacks of the joints, and Carmilla took a seat in one of the roller chairs as she listened to him talk, letting her mind run parallel with his, going on brief tangents to see what solutions came to her.

An hour later, she sent a message to the Demeter Maintenance crew, scolding them for their inferior build and giving them painfully clear plans - just so that they didn’t manage to mess it up - on how to fix the sprinklers.

She still hadn’t figured out how to reply to Laura, but this was something she could do.

\---

Message: Laura Hollis

Good morning! Great news - they’ve  
totally fixed the sprinkler system!  
How awesome is that!! Now we...

\---

Carmilla was helping herself to a cup of coffee in the kitchen area when the sounds of loud arguing reached her. She was weighing up her level of curiosity when the Commander barrelled through from the bathroom to the foyer, making the decision for her. She drifted in behind her to see the scientist and morale officer arguing over a stack of samples.

“I offered my help because I wanted to be nice!” Perry exclaimed, her hands flapping about wildly. “You do _not_ get permission to treat me like- like- like a subordinate!”

In contrast, the scientist was a lot more contained in their reactions, although their fury was clear in their face as they over-pronounced their explanation, “I’m not treating you like a subordinate.” Each syllable was clipped, each word followed by a brief pause, both out of their frustration and in some failing attempt to convey their meaning more clearly. “You aren’t trained.”

The Commander inserted herself here, asking, “What happened?”

Perry looked surprised by the taller redhead’s presence, and she shook her head with a flustered expression. “Nothing,” she replied in a tight voice, “nothing happened.”

“Yeah,” the scientist agreed, every muscle in their face tense as they stared at Perry. “Nothing.”

The Commander didn’t believe it; Carmilla didn’t believe it; hell, even the two of them looked like they didn’t believe it. But, believed or not, it didn’t matter, because Perry stormed off to the kitchen, and the scientist retreated to their section of the foyer with the samples carefully tucked under their arm. The Commander watched them both go with an authoritative look on her face that made Carmilla roll her eyes.

Lawrence caught the end of the eye roll and Carmilla made no effort to hide it, taking a long sip of her coffee as her eyes dared the Commander to say something. Commander Lawrence just glared back and returned to the communications station. Carmilla took in another generous sip of the coffee, scowling against the hideous aftertaste as she headed to the Mechanics wing.

As soon as she entered it, Kirsch jumped towards her, bouncing on the spot as he shoved a tablet into her face. “Dude! Check it!”

“Down, Lassie,” Carmilla muttered as she slid around him into the wing. “Timmy can wait until after I finish my cup of coffee.”

Kirsch trailed her to the workbench as she collapsed into her chair, holding her mug to her face with both hands. He managed to stop himself from pestering her verbally, but his moving from foot to foot wasn’t exactly the perfect example of patience.

Carmilla took her time drinking the coffee, savouring each disgusting sip, and drawing it out longer than usual until Kirsch looked like he was about to vibrate off the surface of the planet. Finally, she set the mug down and gestured him forward, her face a blank mask as if he hadn’t spent the last ten minutes acting like he was about to wet himself.

Relieved, he thrust the tablet at her and she skimmed the first few lines. It was their patent certificate for the Climber Rover, and there were both of their names. It had been two months since their meeting with the board, which was an exceptionally fast patenting - but the patent approval process was down to a fine art on Mars.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes rising to his face, which was paralysed somewhere between excitement and anticipation.

“Congratulations,” she said, every bit genuine.

He flushed, smiling broadly. “Should we-” He paused, thumbs tapping along the side of the tablet. “Should we celebrate?”

Carmilla nodded, once but firmly. “Definitely.”

They passed through the foyer, Kirsch scrambling and eager, talking non-stop about a new beer brew that he’d made, certain that he’d gotten rid of that ‘weird tang’.

“I better not be hearing about drinking happening,” the Commander stated, not looking up from her screen. As the person in charge of the base, she turned a blind eye to their illicit drinking and Kirsch’s brewing, loudly claiming ignorance anytime she came near it.

“Of course not.” Carmilla saluted her lazily. “Never ever.”

The Commander sighed with a weariness that made her seem far older than she was. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

Kirsch grinned at her, ignoring the ‘stupid’ comment. “The patent came through.”

Commander Lawrence always treated Kirsch with a chilly coldness - when she wasn’t yelling at him - but at this news she offered him a terse smile with just the hint of approval. “Good job.”

He beamed brighter and Carmilla knew that she’d be getting a play-by-play of this moment from him later on, but whatever, she was willing to give the kid some leeway right now.

His attention turned to the scientist and he asked, “Hey, dude, do you want to...” He cast a sideways look at Danny and quickly changed his question, “...not drink with us?”

Okay, that was the end of the leeway. Carmilla grabbed Kirsch by the elbow, steering him towards the dining area. “I’m sure they’ve got plenty of-” she waved her hand vaguely “-dirt stuff to do.”

The scientist looked more than a little insulted, and they stood up. “Thanks, Kirsch. I’d love to not drink with you.”

Kirsch brightened, until Carmilla’s grip on his elbow tightened and he yelped and pulled his arm away.

“If that’s alright with you,” the scientist levelled at Carmilla.

“Fine,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “Perfect.”

Of course, it was neither of those things, which was only made that much more obvious later on when Carmilla downed three beers for every one of the other’s.

She was pouring her seventh glass when the scientist commented dryly, “Are you going to leave any for us?”

Carmilla put the jug back down hard enough that it made Kirsch jump in his chair and immediately check it over for any damage.

“Why are you even here, Franken-nerd?” she asked, each word filled with poison.

To credit them, they didn’t back down, instead defiantly sticking their chin towards Carmilla. “Kirsch asked me.”

“Not _here_ here-” Carmilla gestured around the table with her glass “-Hermes here.” She took a drink of the beer, holding eye contact with the scientist as she dared them to answer. “Did you flunk out of Athena?”

They scowled at her. “No, I was top of my class.” It was clear that Carmilla had hit a nerve by the way they snatched the beer jug from Kirsch and roughly poured themselves a fresh glass, causing the beer to splash out of the glass and onto the tabletop.

“And?” Carmilla prompted, not caring to know, but unable to stop from pushing them. All of the frustration that had been pacing inside her had found a target in the form of the scientist, and it was unrelenting.

“And-” They let out a frustrated breath. “I came here because of Laura. And then she got the offer for Demeter and I...”

“Didn’t make the cut?”

It felt like too much, and Kirsch’s elbow in her side proved it, but whatever filter she’d had to protect from letting her more insensitive comments through was long gone.

The scientist didn’t look up from their glass as they replied, “Laura is a brilliant scientist.” They finally met Carmilla’s eyes, and their eyes were such a pale blue that it made Carmilla shift uncomfortably in her seat. “But I’m the best. I just don’t have the same legacy.”

Apparently the shadow of Laura’s mother covered the entire surface of Mars.

This was enough to silence Carmilla, although Kirsch’s interest seemed to be piqued as he leaned forward and asked, “Why don’t you go back to Athena?”

They shook their head, taking a considering sip of their beer. “It’s easier here. There, people know me as... as a different person. As someone I’m not.” They shrugged and repeated, “It’s easier here.”

Their answer was beyond cryptic, but no one asked them to elaborate - Kirsch too aware of their discomfort, and Carmilla unable to muster up the effort.

Instead, Carmilla’s train of thought returned where it always did - Laura. (The fact that she’d become one of _those_ people was sickening, and reminded her of Ell, but was entirely different at the same time.) She slid her beer over to the scientist, because they looked about done with theirs, and muttered a goodbye as she headed to the bunks - to her tablet.

The walk there made it obvious that she was more drunk than she thought. While she’d been sitting she hadn’t felt much, but each step forward was unstable, a jolt to the system that she was unprepared for despite being the one doing the walking. It was a reflection of her thought process, which had gone from a linear pattern to an erratic buzz, spiking with sprinklers and Laura’s eyes.

The door to the bunks opened, and instead of the darkness she’d been expecting, the small reading light in Perry’s bunk cut a weak path through the room. She blinked at it for a moment before continuing to her bunk, and pulling her palm tablet out from under her pillow. The conversation with Laura was the first thing that came up, and the glare of the screen made her squint, but her eyes adjusted shortly after and she climbed into bed while managing to keep the screen in front of her face.

Dropping onto the bed made her world tilt messily, and she waited for her equilibrium to settle as she lay on her side and gripped the tablet with both hands, balancing it on its side as she started reading from the first message Laura had sent.

\---

Carmilla woke up to a pounding headache and her tongue painfully glued to the roof of her mouth. Groaning, she went to turn onto her front, but when the slight movement left her head spinning, she gave up and instead stayed very, very still.

In her peripheral vision she caught something slowly rising above the side of the mattress and was measuring just how much discomfort she’d feel by turning to look at it properly when Kirsch’s voice rasped from under her, “Water.”

She reached over to take the water canteen while moving as little as possible and eased her lips open, which felt like cracking open a layer of dry earth, to let the water soothe her parched mouth. It started to ease the thick dryness, helping dull the sharp edge of her headache.

“What the fuck was in that beer?” she asked, and her voice came out so rough that the words bled into croakiness. She took another sip of the water and held the heel of her palm against her throbbing forehead.

“I think I fucked it up.”

Carmilla scoffed, and then winced.

“It tasted better though, right?”

In her mind’s eye, she threw the water canteen at him. In reality, she clutched it to her chest and wondered if she could scam a sleeping pill off Perry so she could sleep off the hangover.

Two message notifications sounded, making them both groan quietly. One was Carmilla’s - the generic tablet notification sound - the other’s was Kirsch’s. Carmilla knew this because he’d replaced his notification sound with some stupid catch phrase from a sitcom, and refused to change it regardless of how many times she yelled at him.

She was weighing up if yelling at him would be worth it or not, when he said in a confused voice, “They want us at Demeter.”

“What?” Carmilla frowned and an echo of pain rang through her mind. Ugh.

“They want our help developing Pod transfer equipment,” he explained. “They must have seen the patent.”

Carmilla hadn’t told him the truth about where the sudden slew of troubleshooting issues had come from, and he hadn’t asked, so she didn’t care to tell him now. It felt... Well, it didn’t matter how it felt, it wasn’t important.

“Or it could be all that stuff you’ve been helping them with,” he continued, “but you didn’t tell them I was helping, did you?”

She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Of course I did.”

“You-”

Carmilla rolled off the bed, half-wishing that she’d knock herself out so that she didn’t have to deal with this conversation, or this hangover. No such luck, her legs managed to catch her, and she continued to the bathroom so she could take a shower and try and ease the throbbing that originated between her eyes and rippled out.

It wasn’t until she was in the shower that she properly realised what Kirsch had said, and what it meant.

 _Oh_.

\---

Commander Lawrence followed her into the kitchen area, her hands cutting through the air in frustrated gestures as she spoke. “You _are_ going to Demeter.”

“Oh please, you aren’t my boss.”

Lawrence’s face flushed red - because yeah, technically she was, but every time Carmilla insisted she wasn’t it made her so angry that it was impossible _not_ to say it.

“It’s an order from Zeus,” Danny said in a breathlessly haughty voice.

Carmilla rolled her eyes. “Zeus can suck my-”

“Karnstein,” Danny interrupted her, “if you finish that sentence I am going to give you bathroom duty for the rest of the year.”

Carmilla mimed zipping her lips closed and throwing away the key with a flick of her fingers.

Satisfied, if slightly miffed at her methods, the Commander stated firmly, “You are going to Demeter. You will be polite, and helpful, and not embarrass me by being sent back with a reprimand.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Carmilla said with a firm salute, every word dripping with sarcasm.

“I’m serious.”

“Chill, Red,” Carmilla said, dropping her mocking formality, and her casual reply made the Commander’s nostrils flare, although she stayed silent. Carmilla added, “I’ll go, whatever. All you have to do is ask nicely.”

Commander Lawrence glared at her, while Carmilla simply looked back expectantly.

Lawrence finally broke. “What?”

“Are you going to ask nicely?”

Through gritted teeth, the Commander asked, “Will you go to Demeter?” There was a long tense pause and then, “Please?”

“Well, since you asked so politely...”

Unable to take anymore, Commander Lawrence stormed away, leaving Carmilla to revel in the small feeling of victory before the familiar sinking mix of emotion settled in. Mocking the Commander had been a nice break from it, but she knew that it would only deepen from here.

It was now a certainty. She would have to see Laura, and confront the smorgasbord of emotions that the woman brought with her.

Not responding to Laura had been rude, sure, but it was comforting to know that she could wait until she had words to say, some way to express herself without worrying about falling into a useless, hurtful anger. Being thrust into a small base with the scientist wasn’t waiting, it wasn’t comforting.

It was Mars.

And whatever kindness Laura had offered through her steadfast communication had been wiped away by the red planet, as it always was and always would be.

\---

Carmilla’s hands trembled around the buckles of the suit, making the metal prongs shake too much to click into place. Her frustration grew, turning her breathing into crashing waves in her ears as her body temperature rose in prickly ripples across her skin.

She threw the buckle open, letting it smack loudly against the outside of her suit without caring if she’d broken something. The Commander could yell at her all she wanted, she wasn’t going to do this, she wasn’t going to-

“Can I?”

Kirsch was standing in front of her. She didn’t know how much he’d seen, but it was obviously enough.

She clenched her hands by her side and nodded without looking at him. He slowly moved into her space, his hands tentative as they reached towards her, but she didn’t say anything as he took a hold of the buckle. He secured it as quickly as possible, checked her gear over, and stepped back again.

“We don’t have to go, dude,” he offered. He hadn’t asked why she was being so weird about Laura, but he hadn’t had to. He’d been there on the trip back to Hermes, and he’d known better than to question her then or now.

She waited until she could loosen her fists without her hands betraying her, and finally looked up at him. “Shut up and pack the rover.”

It didn’t take very long to pack it - they weren’t taking much with them - and, in what seemed like far too short of a time period, he was asking her if she was ready to go in a careful way that just made her mad.

“Whatever.” She moved past him to the airlock, pressing her fingertips against the inside of her suit gloves. Once he ambled in, she closed the inside door and waited for the compartment to depressurise.

The airlock hissed, the air rushing out and making Carmilla think of the artificial Earth air being released into the atmosphere, dispersing on a planet that it was never meant to be on.

“...can drive?”

Carmilla realised that Kirsch had been talking through the comm-link, but she’d only caught the tail end of what he’d said.

“What?” she asked, and for the first time in a long time she heard the feedback of her voice over the comms, and was struck by how alien it sounded.

“I can drive,” he repeated, this time as a statement instead of a question.

She didn’t reply to him, but when she got into the Rover she sat in the passenger seat. They were taking the base’s Travel Rover, leaving the Climber for the scientist’s apparently important work. Carmilla hadn’t been in this Rover since the storm. Kirsch had been the one to restore it after the storm, and it occurred to Carmilla that the absent way she realised that might be her mind’s attempt to protect her.

The trip was long, headed at first in the direction of Zeus, but once they were free of the valley they turned to the right instead of continuing straight on. They followed the line of the Mons, and Carmilla didn’t think of the caves and the dust and the fact that Laura had pulled them out of it.

Instead, she read over the memo from Base Demeter.

> Subject: Demeter Pod Transports
> 
> From: Base Zeus Deployment
> 
> To: Karnstein, Carmilla; Kirsch, Wilson
> 
> CC: Base Demeter MAIN
> 
> Base Demeter needs assistance building suitable transports between their pods. Please find the requirements attached. Base blueprints can be found on MarsNet.
> 
> Your arrival has been scheduled for 1200 on the 6th.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Zeus Deployment Department

It was brief. She didn’t imagine that Laura’s had been much longer. She wondered if they’d been sent by the same person, or by someone else in the department. She didn’t know which she preferred.

\---

_Ten years ago_

Carmilla stared down the five people that made up the Mars Program Recruitment Board. They were sitting at a long folding table in front of her, in chairs that were far nicer than the simple plastic one she had been offered. Her jaw was squared off, but her right hand was in her pocket, turning the penny over and over in her palm.

The only person who had spoken so far was the woman at the centre; the others were all men, of various shapes and hairlines, and all of them so dull looking that Carmilla forgot each of their faces as soon as she looked away from them.

The woman was well into her fifties, with a severe hair cut that drew attention to the deep crows feet around her eyes that had been caked over with thick layers of make up. She wore red cat-eye glasses with a gold cord that looped down behind her neck, and Carmilla stared at the swaying cord when the glare from the fluorescents turned the woman’s lenses opaque.

“You understand that if you are chosen for the program that you may be re-assigned to different bases at the discretion of the Mars committee?”

“Why would that matter?” Carmilla asked, suddenly realising that the woman had the same voice as one of her elementary teachers - a woman who had once yanked on Carmilla’s elbow to stop her from running in the classroom and left red finger marks on her skin.

“Some people find that they make...” The woman smacked her lips and the sound felt like a cold finger down Carmilla’s spine. “Roots.”

“I’m not big on roots.”

The woman appraised her, and then nodded. “Thank you, Miss Karnstein. We will let you know.”

Carmilla stood. The penny in her palm stopped flipping and the edges of the coin bit into her skin as she left the wood-panelled conference room.

\---

Carmilla woke to Kirsch gently shaking her, unaware that she’d fallen asleep. She grabbed onto his arms to stop him, because _why_.

Kirsch leaned back with a sheepish look and apologised, “Sorry, dude, you weren’t waking up.” He gestured outside the Rover. “We’re here.”

Carmilla looked outside - they were in a generously sized hangar, parked next to two Tow Rovers with trailers hooked up behind them, making them look like transport trucks from Earth. The trailers were hermetically sealed, designed to transport plant and food materials to other bases, and the Tow Rovers were almost twice the height of normal Rovers and half the length. To get into them you had to climb up the ladder rungs bolted to the sides, because most people could barely see over the wheel, let alone reach the side doors.

The Tow Rovers were parked at two separate docks, which were bare in a way that it was obvious they hadn’t been used yet. It was eerie to see these massive mechanical beasts sitting dormant in a dock built for activity, but completely free of it.

She’d examined the Demeter blueprints long before the Zeus Deployment Department had suggested it. She’d done it the night she’d arrived back at Hermes, when she couldn’t sleep and all she could think about was the look Laura had given her when she’d asked her not to go.

The base was built into a hollow under the planet’s surface that had been nicknamed the Bowl for its shape. On the surface, the Bowl was a jagged circle about the size of a football field. The space underneath was far larger, the rock pulling back in a dome shape for hundreds of metres down, so that by the time it reached the flat ground underneath there was plenty of space hidden in the shadows of the rock.

Really, it looked more like a vase than a bowl, but whatever.

The top edges of the Bowl had been sanded back until they were structurally sound and mirrors were installed along the edge. These mirrors could be tilted almost 300 degrees to angle the sun’s rays into the Bowl, pinpointing exactly where they would land, to match each Pod’s requirements.

The entrance to the base had been carved into the Bowl’s walls; a corkscrew path with such a shallow incline it added an extra 45 minutes to the travel time. The path had been built wide and tall enough for the Tow Rovers and trailers, with force field guardrails along the edges.

The base itself currently consisted of four Pods, each having their own carefully cultivated environment to match their plants needs, from tropical humidity to dry and cool. They sat along the circumference of the Bowl, two on each side of the Docking Hangar, with plenty of room for more Pods to be built in the future.

Attached to the Docking Hangar, towards the centre of the Bowl, but not reaching the stream of sunlight, were the living quarters. It was by far the smallest building, with two storeys that contained the bunks, bathroom, eating area, rec room, first aid station, and main communication hub.

Currently there were only fifteen people stationed at Demeter; twelve maintenance personnel (three per pod, working eight hour shifts a piece), a Base Commander, morale officer, and... Laura. It was the maintenance personnel’s job to look after the plants and provide basic service to the equipment. However, their main knowledge lay in botany, so Carmilla supposed she shouldn’t have been so dismissive in her messages, but it wasn’t her fault that Zeus didn’t get a proper engineer (or even a mechanic) at Demeter.

At least, until now.

They were both out of the Rover and Kirsch was fangirling over the Tow Rovers by the time the morale officer appeared at the entrance of the Docking Hangar, looking offended by their presence.

“You’re early,” she pointed out. Carmilla took in the blonde amusedly. She knew that not all morale officers were like Perry, uptight and frazzled, but most of the ones she’d met were at least accommodating - even if it was sickeningly fake. This blonde was nothing like that, her hair pulled into a low bun and eyes narrowed at the two as if she was trying to judge if they were going to waste her time.

“Sorry.” Kirsch jumped away from the Tow Rover and wiped his hands off on his overalls. It was a mystery how he’d already managed to stain them, and wiping them only succeeded in covering his palms with more grease. He held his blackened hand out towards her. “I’m Kirsch.”

The morale office ignored the offered hand. “Betty Spielsdorf. Morale officer.” Her position was already obvious from the white and navy blue uniform she was wearing that matched Perry’s, but Carmilla didn’t bother pointing that out. Unlike Perry, Betty had the white sleeves folded up to the elbows, and she had left the shirt zip partly open so that the collar flared out from her collarbone.

The morale officer looked like she was waiting for Carmilla to introduce herself, but instead Carmilla just spun her helmet by the rim and asked, “So, where do we put our stuff? Or are you the porter too?”

Betty levelled Carmilla with a glare that was terribly un-morale-officer of her before turning on her heel. “Follow me.”

She led them out of the Docking Hangar, through a set of double doors into the living quarters. The first level had all of the communal areas, and they crossed through the communications hub to the stairs that led to the bunks on the second floor. Unlike Hermes, the permanent bunks at Demeter were separate rooms, but, Carmilla realised with a scowl, the guest room was a dormitory. There were six beds in the room that Betty led them to, two embedded in each wall, and Carmilla chose the furthest upper bed, dumping her bag onto it but keeping her helmet in hand.

“What, no chocolate on the pillows?”

The morale officer ignored her and said to Kirsch, “The head of the maintenance crew is expecting both of you in an hour. Meet her in the communications hub.” With that, she left and the door slid shut behind her.

“Do you want to just, like, stay here?” Kirsch asked and Carmilla heard it as what it meant - ‘do you want to hide?’.

And she did, she wanted it more than anything, but the fact that he’d asked made it impossible for her to. Instead, she stalked towards the door and it opened to Laura.

Laura was standing in her room’s doorway, across the hall from the visitors’ dorm, halfway through a yawn. Her hair was a mess and her sleep shirt was askew, leaving her right shoulder bare, and the sight of her froze Carmilla. For a moment what had happened didn’t matter because _was Laura always this beautiful_ \- but then it came back again and the moment soured.

Laura was the first to speak, her yawn having crumpled into a surprised, soft expression. “Hey.”

All of those lengthy messages and somehow this one small spoken word felt heavier than everything else.

Kirsch was behind Carmilla, which she didn’t realise until he spoke in a surprisingly cold voice, “You’re up late.”

Laura’s eyes hesitated over Carmilla’s face before going up to Kirsch’s. “Yeah, I- I had a late night.”

A thick silence flooded the corridor between them before Laura realised how her words sounded and she quickly clarified, “With dirt. Samples. You know, science!” She laughed weakly, and her eyes went to Carmilla again before she covered her disappointment with a large, empty smile. “Anyway, shower. Showering! Is, um, what I need to- yeah.” Laura juggled a plastic shower bag from one hand to the other while continuing to stare at Carmilla. “It’s good to see you.”

Then, she was gone, and Carmilla felt like she’d taken the air out of her lungs with her.

Carmilla turned to Kirsch. “What the fuck was that?”

“I know right?” His eyes were still on the hallway that Laura had gone down. “That was really weir-”

“Not _her_ ,” she said, and saying ‘her’ felt like dragging each letter out of her throat, “you.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

She put a hand up between them, stepping into the hallway, hoping, _praying_ , that he wouldn’t follow. She couldn’t deal with this; she couldn’t deal with Laura being _Laura_ , and being the person who left, but still being _Laura_ ; she couldn’t deal with Kirsch acting like some big brother. She couldn’t... No.

“Just...” She took another step, away from the mechanic. “Back off.”

She left, walking in the opposite direction from Laura, and leaving a very hurt Kirsch in her wake. She didn’t realise until later that was still holding her helmet.

\---

Betty found Carmilla in the rec room, facing the large window that filled the wall and looked out onto the centre of the Bowl. The sun was a solid column of light, pouring down from the surface and turning the dust in the Bowl into glittering specks that floated lazily through the air. Pod 2 and 3 were scheduled for sunlight, and the mirrors at the mouth of the Bowl directed a beam to each of them, making them glow against the shadows that surrounded them.

“You weren’t at your briefing,” the morale officer stated, not sitting in the free chair next to Carmilla, instead choosing to stand in front of her, between her and the view of the Bowl.

Carmilla didn’t look up from her tablet screen. “Was I missed?”

“Actually, Sarah Jane was glad you didn’t come,” Betty replied. “Apparently, you’re unpleasant in your messages.”

“Well, that’s rude.”

There was a loud scraping sound as Betty dragged over a chair and sat down in front of Carmilla. “You aren’t very popular here.”

Carmilla snorted. “Like I care.”

“Hey.”

Carmilla finally looked up from her tablet with a practiced expression of boredom on her face.

“If you don’t want to be here, I can get you sent back,” she said. “Don’t fuck with my people.”

Carmilla considered her and then tapped something out on her tablet. Betty’s tablet notification went off - a pattern of gentle chimes - and Carmilla nodded at it. “You should get that, it might be important.”

Betty brought it out, frowning at the screen and opening the message to find a basic early draft of a pod transport system from Carmilla. Betty looked back up at the engineer, who met her questioning look steadily.

“I was picked for a reason. I’m not going to jump through your hoops, but I’ll do my job.”

Betty studied Carmilla’s face for a long moment before agreeing grudgingly, “Fine. But I’m serious about you fucking with my people.”

There was something about the firmness in her tone that made Carmilla think of Laura and the empty smile she’d offered before. With that image in her head, any response that she could have made fled from her mind, so instead she just nodded.

Betty left the rec room and Carmilla stared at the light that filled the centre of the Bowl until her eyes ached.

She waited well into the night to get food from the kitchen, wanting to avoid Kirsch and the other Demeter workers (and Laura). So, of course, when she walked into the kitchen area she found Laura standing in front of the open fridge, drumming her fingers along the side of the door and humming.

The light of the fridge illuminated her, casting her shadow onto the table behind her and across the length of the room so that it came just short of where Carmilla was standing in the doorway.

Carmilla didn’t move, listening to Laura hum a tune that she didn’t recognise. The tablet in her hands felt heavier than ever, weighed down with the lack of messages from the scientist that day.

Laura got something out of the fridge, closing the door and cutting the light away from the room so that her shadow was swallowed by the dark. Carmilla was still staring at the place where it had been when she felt the scientist’s eyes on her like a gentle finger under her chin, urging her to look up.

“I’m sorry.”

The plate Laura had gotten from the fridge clacked onto the tabletop, and Carmilla’s eyes snapped to the sound. Having surrendered her locked gaze with the floor, she let her eyes drift up to Laura’s face. Having lost the light from the fridge, the room had returned to the dim default lighting, so they could both see each other, but not clearly.

“Don’t,” Carmilla said, and ached at how much it sounded like ‘please’.

“Don’t what?” Laura asked.

Carmilla didn’t clarify; she didn’t need to. They both knew what she meant. _Don’t apologise, don’t pretend like you’d do different - don’t_.

Feeling the same souring as before, Carmilla turned to leave.

“Don’t go,” Laura said plaintively, and Carmilla was quite sure her heart stopped beating for a long moment. Then, as if overcome with the need to beat, it squeezed so hard she felt it in her throat.

Those words - that echo of the moment that had haunted Carmilla for the last two months - made the bottom of Carmilla’s stomach drop.

“How can you ask me that?” Carmilla asked, and she thought she would be shaking with rage, but she wasn’t. She was just sad.

“Carm, I-”

Carmilla turned to Laura - waiting for the apology, waiting for something to jump on - but instead Laura just bit her lip.

“I won’t message you anymore if you don’t want me to,” Laura said, and it was obvious that the ease with which she’d understood Carmilla had been chipped away.

Carmilla had no idea how to respond, which was why it was a surprise when she heard herself mutter, “Do whatever you want.” Shaking inside, and afraid that something else bitter and poisonous would spill out of her, she left the room, not feeling hungry at all.

\---

It took Carmilla three days to finish the blueprints. She’d claimed the rec room as her own; the only person who’d dared to venture in was Betty, who demanded the room back and had been ignored.

She’d gone through several different transport ideas before settling on something far more permanent - tubes that would connect each Pod with the Docking Hangar, with automated shuttles that would travel from end to end. It would turn the floor of the Bowl into a fan, the tubes segmenting the circular space. With this system they’d be able to transport hundreds of kilos of food easily, while also accommodating for when extra Pods would be added, and saving them having to wait for airlock transfers.

The idea had been Kirsch’s.

They hadn’t spoken, but he had sent a one-word message to her tablet, so early in the second morning that he probably hadn’t slept yet, and it cut through all the muddled ideas she’d been flicking through in her mind.

Message: Wilson Kirsch

Subway?

And now, two full days later, she sent him back the design of the idea fully realised.

It took ten minutes for Kirsch to burst into the rec room, closely followed by Laura.

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” He held his tablet towards her with her message displayed on the screen, as if she needed reminding of what she’d sent to him, the Demeter crew, and the Zeus stock room.

“You don’t need me to build it.” Her eyes dropped to Laura for a moment and she regretted it instantly; the scientist looked like an abandoned child. “I shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

Kirsch stepped forward. “Don’t do this.”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“It-” He faltered. “It makes _every_ difference. I can’t do this without you, I’m not-”

She walked towards the door until she was standing next to him, both of them facing different directions, and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll do fine, grease-head.”

He looked down at her and there was no belief in his face, but his shoulders sagged and he nodded regardless. She made eye contact with Laura before edging through the door and heading to the Docking Hangar where the Transport Rover was waiting.

Laura trailed her the whole way, not saying anything, not even showing anything on her face, just walking the path that Carmilla had set.

By the time the Hangar doors closed, sealing them both into this cavernous, empty space, Carmilla felt ready to break.

She turned to the scientist and demanded, “What do you want?” Her voice was strong, but she’d never sounded so weak.

“I had to leave,” Laura said, her voice small and lost. But, then she repeated, “I had to leave,” and it didn’t sound lost anymore. “Why did you come if you were just going to-?” She shrugged a gesture at the space between them.

“I had to come.”

“You could have told me to stop messaging you,” Laura pointed out, ignoring Carmilla’s reply.

Words failed Carmilla, but Laura didn’t seem to notice as an erratic energy crackled through her.

“I thought there was something here, and you couldn’t even be, be...” Laura searched for the word, until she found it with a bite, “ _Kind_ enough to correct me.”

Laura was wrong, she was so wrong, but Carmilla didn’t have the words to say it. She was so fucking broken (and angry, and sad, and _hurt_ ), that she couldn’t even say something to take the bitter, pained expression off Laura’s face.

She thought of Ell, and of how she’d thought Laura was different, and how Laura _was_ different, and realised that the problem wasn’t Laura, or Ell; it was her. The problem was her.

“You don’t want a person like me,” she said, and it felt so true that for a moment Carmilla felt like throwing up.

“A person like you?” Laura echoed incredulously. “A person like-” She walked away, back to the doors, which opened for her - but she didn’t walk through them. Instead, she paced back to Carmilla and stared her directly in the eye, her face full of defiance. “Do you think I have you on a pedestal?” she asked, spitting out the word ‘pedestal’. “That I see you as some mysterious, cryptic hot person that I’m using to act out a teenage ‘Buffy’ fantasy? That I don’t see you?”

It couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it reminded Carmilla of what LaFontaine had said about Laura’s legacy, and that Laura’s mother had been put _on a literal pedestal_.

She wanted to apologise, to explain, but self-loathing and pride had stolen her ability to form words. Hell, it had stolen her ability to even think words.

Somehow, she managed to say, “You don’t even know me,” but it felt like she was saying it to herself rather than Laura.

Laura stopped and the energy collapsed out of her in a breath. She replied quietly, “Maybe I don’t.”

Carmilla looked away. The words felt like thorns, digging into her skin and burrowing so deep that she felt like she’d never be able to pull them back out again.

“Maybe I was wrong this entire time,” Laura said evenly, “but I don’t think I was.”

Carmilla watched the steeliness set itself in Laura’s eyes and, despite herself, she began to hope. This small part of her reasoned that if Laura could see something in her then maybe there was. Maybe she wasn’t just the broken person that everyone left, that _Laura_ had left.

“I know that it’s hard, after what happened. I know that when you asked me to...” Laura hesitated, and some of her resolve softened, but it returned in an instant. “But I’m here, and I want this.”

Carmilla felt like she was splitting open, because, after everything, Laura was saying these words, and looking past everything to offer her this. But she ached too - a deep, gnawing, consuming ache. She wanted nothing more than to say yes, to fall into the scientist and pretend that it was that simple. But she couldn’t, because it wasn’t.

“I need...” Carmilla paused, the words feeling impossibly heavy to push out of her mouth.

Laura nodded, knowing what Carmilla meant - time, space, and something that couldn’t be described in simple words. Something that Carmilla might never find. “Okay.”

“I’m not asking you to wait,” Carmilla said in a hoarse voice; this conversation had taken a toll on her.

“And I’m not promising I will,” Laura replied, and Carmilla believed her, except for the look on her face that said, quite plainly, ‘but I would’.

\---

The drive up to the surface was winding, and Carmilla took it slowly. Even with the force field guardrails, the drop off down the side of the path was terrifying. It took her an hour to get to the surface, by which time she was thoroughly sick of going around in circles. She pulled the Rover to a stop, put her helmet on, and climbed out.

From here the Bowl didn’t look like it held a base deep underneath, although the mirrors lining the hole were a give away.

She sat on top of the Rover’s roof and looked up at the night sky, propping herself up with her hands. Rover travel didn’t usually happen at night, but the storm radar was clear and Carmilla didn’t mind if the battery drained and she had to wait for sunrise.

She could see Phobos, Mars’ larger moon, cutting a path across the star-filled night, while the smaller one, Deimos, hung above her. Carmilla knew that Deimos was also moving, just far slower, but knowing that didn’t help her see it. If anything, it just made the moon seem more motionless, as if it had been frozen in place and wouldn’t move regardless of how long she lay here.

Eventually, though, it did move. She saw it inch across the map that the stars created, and it felt like something inside her moved with it.

She got up, her joints stiff from the cold, even though the suit had done its best to keep her warm, and dropped back into the Rover. After she’d re-sealed the hatch, she tapped out a quick message on her tablet and sent it.

She released the lock on her helmet and pulled it off, dropping it onto the empty seat next to her. She shook her hair free and it spilled down the suit’s shoulders, black against the white material, as she waited for the reply.

It came shortly afterwards, and Carmilla put the Rover into gear and moved forward.

\---

Carmilla walked the hallway, counting each step in her head and flipping the penny in her palm in time with them. She reached the door and stopped, giving the penny one extra flip before pressing the button by the door.

It slid open and Dr Cochrane stood there with a gentle smile on her face. “Hello, Carmilla.”

“Doc,” Carmilla greeted her.

Dr Cochrane stepped aside to let Carmilla into the office, her left hand raised to welcome her in.

Carmilla hesitated on the threshold. She flipped the penny - one, twice, three times. Then she went in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it :)
> 
> Join me on tumblr at [churchofyourcurves](http://www.churchofyourcurves.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter 6

_Seven and a half years ago_

Carmilla ran her hand over her father’s scribbled notes in the margin of the yellowing page. It had been one of his favourite books throughout college and well into his adult life, if the different pen colours and evolving penmanship was any indication.

She’d never been close to him when he’d been alive; he’d taken the mantle of background parent quite comfortably, and she’d never tried to prod him out of it. This book, though, these notes, made her feel closer to him. She could draw his personality out of the notes, which were incisive at best and sex jokes at worst.

She’d gotten clearance to take it up to Mars after arguing that plenty of people were taking Bibles, but had probably made a few enemies in the process. Whatever, those pencil pushers weren’t going up to Mars, she was.

God, she was.

Tomorrow was launch day, the day that had been prepared for ad nauseum, and yet it’s arrival still felt like a surprise. The whole compound was buzzing with it, but Carmilla had refused to get swept up in it. Instead, she stayed in the dorm room, tucked herself into the corner of her bottom bunk bed, and started re-reading her dad’s book. Okay, maybe she was a little swept.

“Karnstein.”

Carmilla looked up from the page to see one of the newer Commanders standing in the doorway. Most Commanders working the Mars program had relaxed into more of a civilian look, but this one still had his military buzz cut and freshly pressed uniform, complete with all the right creases in all the right places.

He turned his body to the side in a precise action, and his feet snapped together firmly. “You have a visitor.”

“Alright, GI Joe,” Carmilla muttered under her breath as she slipped the bookmark in place and tucked the book under her pillow. She slunk off the bed in a boneless way and could feel the distaste leak through the Commander’s stern exterior, but it just made her grin as she stood up and winked at him. “Lead the way, cowboy.”

He gave Carmilla as much of a withering stare as he could while still maintaining his professionalism, then he turned on his heel and started to lead her through the compound. Each of his steps were punctuated with a squeak against the linoleum floors, and Carmilla wondered if he liked or hated that. When they reached the visitors area he stood to the side again, not making a move to hold the door open for her, and she rolled her eyes.

“Thanks for the escort,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she strode into the room.

She could practically hear his ass cheeks clench at her actions and she tried not to laugh out loud as the door swung shut behind her.

The visitors area was depressing; it had carpeting that used to be blue but had been worn down to brown, hideous fluorescent lighting, and a collection of out of date magazines in the corner next to a crate of old toys. The room was filled with chipped round tables bordered by plastic chairs, and most of these were occupied by visiting families and friends talking excitedly to Mars candidates, bringing the noise in the room up to a dull roar.

Carmilla spotted Mattie at the opposite side of the room, standing next to a table and suspiciously watching the child at the next table as he slammed his sticky hands on everything within reach. She looked so out of place amongst the other visitors in her sleek black dress and precisely done make up that it made Carmilla’s throat squeeze quite suddenly.

“Mattie! You came!” Ignoring the other people in the room, Carmilla wove through the tables and launched into a hug with her adoptive sister.

Mattie embraced her, giggling at Carmilla’s excitement as she squeezed her tightly. “Of course I did, darling.”

They separated and Carmilla took a seat at the table while Mattie regarded it dubiously. “Why do they insist on making this place look like a prison? You’re a scientific pioneer, not a criminal.”

“Mattie,” she protested, desperate to spend this time with her sister properly instead of discussing the decor.

“Alright, alright.” Sitting on the edge of the chair, Mattie folded her hands in her lap and gave her hair a casual flick behind her shoulders. It landed perfectly, as always.

Carmilla’s hand went to her own hair, before realising that it had been tied up - compound protocol - and instead batted at the bottom of her ponytail. “Where’s Mother?”

“She won’t be coming until the launch,” Mattie replied. “She said something about a benefit of some sort.”

Carmilla wasn’t surprised, but not being surprised and not being disappointed were two vastly different things.

“And I suppose William is trailing after her like a good lapdog?”

“You know William.” Mattie paused and her expression became serious. “Are you quite sure you want to leave?”

“Mattie...”

“I know, I know.” This ground was well covered between them, but Mattie still asked and Carmilla was yet to lose her patience. “I just... thought I’d ask. I do hate losing my favourite family member to Mars.”

Carmilla’s face softened and she nudged her arm. “We can still message each other. And video call.”

Mattie offered her a smile, but it barely reached her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me on this wretched planet.” She leaned forward, putting a hand on Carmilla’s arm as she asked, “There don’t happen to be any positions open for lawyers?”

“I think they’re trying to avoid taking the dregs of society.”

“Excuse you!” Mattie exclaimed, but her smile was wicked. “I prefer to be referred to as a bloodsucking leech. Or a vampire, they have a certain _je ne sais quoi_ that I quite enjoy. And the living forever part isn’t too shabby either.”

Carmilla laughed warmly and was about to reply when their attention was captured by the child who had started screaming because he’d been put on someone’s lap and could no longer slap his palms on the table.

Carmilla shared a look with Mattie and suggested, “Let’s go outside.”

Mattie eyed the child. “Good idea.”

The compound had originally been a military base, established during the Vietnam war, and had been passed from the military branch to aeronautics once the Mars program had gained more traction within the government. It had been refurbished to suit the rigorous training program that Mars candidates had to undergo, but the facility itself still felt very much like a military base with its uniform brick buildings that sat in a tight formation, and a huge grass area for drills.

The grass area had been kept, although the drills had changed. It was normal to see a group of people walking the field while in full space suit gear, but today they were empty; all of the classes had been suspended today and tomorrow as everyone got ready for the third phase to launch.

Carmilla led Mattie across the strip of asphalt in front of the building and towards the field. She was surprised by how much she missed the sound of Mattie’s heels clicking against the ground.

An even blanket of grey clouds hung above them, pressing down heavily and making the sky seem far closer than it was. The weather had been like this for the past two days, but it hadn’t rained yet, just remained as a vague threat, as if to remind them of the environment they were leaving. There had been rumours of the weather delaying the launch, but Carmilla hadn’t put any stock in them.

A thin concrete path extended from the end of the asphalt strip for almost half a mile forward, separating the running track on the left from the field on the right, and stopping a few feet short of the baseball field. The almost-white concrete glared in the light that pushed through the clouds, somehow feeling brighter than it did when the sun was in full force.

They walked on the path, avoiding the grass for the sake of Mattie’s stilettos, and Carmilla stared up at the cloudy sky, trying to commit it to memory; the cool bite of the air, the satisfyingly even spread of the clouds, the feeling that if she stood on top of a building she’d be able to reach up and grab a handful. She didn’t think she’d miss clouds on Mars, but she still found herself collecting moments like this anyway, just in case.

Mattie drew her out of pressing the moment to her memory by asking, “Are you scared?”

Carmilla dropped her eyes from the sky. “No.”

Mattie’s eyebrows rose and Carmilla shrugged.

“I’m not naive, I know all the things that could go wrong.” She scoffed, “They made us study them.”

They reached the end of the path and paused, Mattie turning to face Carmilla, while Carmilla stepped towards the baseball field, leaving the concrete for the grass.

The baseball field had been built after the compound had changed hands, something about team-building, but Carmilla had just used the weekly games as a chance to read in the dugout. She committed this to memory too - the way the diamond had been carved out of the grass and painted over with white lines smudged at the edges by people running down them.

With the sport she’d never had an interest in filed away, she turned to Mattie, who was staring at Carmilla’s boots on the grass where she could not follow.

“Not going is what scares me.”

Mattie’s eyes rose to Carmilla’s face, sharp but deeply warm, and she cocked her head. “Death before boredom?”

Carmilla smirked. “Death before boredom.”

Mattie appraised her and Carmilla saw the flicker of pride in her face, although neither of them addressed it vocally.

It was then that fat raindrops started to fall from the sky. One hit Mattie’s forehead, another hit Carmilla’s nose, and within seconds thick sheets of water started to pour from the clouds that had waited too long to free them. The ground turned slick in mere moments, and Carmilla grabbed onto Mattie’s hand to keep her steady as they sprinted down the concrete path, shrieking with laughter.

They made it back to the concrete awning that jutted out from the front of the building, the only area that had been left dry from the sudden storm, but didn’t let go of each other’s hands. They shared matching wild grins, panting clouds of condensation as the sky poured itself down into the Earth.

\---

Carmilla woke up from a dream about her parents. The details slipped through her fingers, but she remembered them meeting Mattie, and she was quite sure that she’d cried during it. It hadn’t been from sadness, but as some form of release - an emotional Heimlich that still lingered in her chest.

She got out of bed and, for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel the fog of exhaustion draped over the front of her mind.

She picked up her tablet from the side table and unlocked the screen. She hadn’t gotten a reply from Laura yet, but it was still early, so she started to play some music through the speakers and went into the bathroom for a shower. She undressed slowly, aware of each piece of clothing that she stripped off her, before getting into the cubicle and leaning against the wall as she let the water cover her.

For once, her mind wasn’t simultaneously tearing down four different tracks at breakneck speed, she was just... here. She closed her eyes and let the new smooth feeling wrap itself around her and settle into her bones.

She thought of the last day she’d spent with Mattie, of running through the rain, and laughing, and never really understanding what Mars would be.

She hadn’t thought about Mattie in a long time, not since the grief-stricken months following her death five years ago. At first there had been nothing else she could think about, but gradually her sister faded from her mind, to the point that any thought she put into her felt like poking at a scab.

Returning to it now didn’t feel like that though.

A notification went off on her tablet, interrupting the music; the ding crisp against the swell of the symphony. She opened her eyes and the water stopped.

\---

_Last night_

Carmilla stared at the digital painting on the opposite wall, watching the tropical fish swim lazily across the screen, flicking their tails and showing off the rainbow colours of their scales. The last time she’d been here it was a painting of a forest that would rustle every so often with creatures that she could never spot. She wondered if it was meant to ignite some sort of yearning for Earth, and if that was something the Zeus psychiatrist should be trying to do.

“So,” Dr Cochrane started, “what changed your mind?”

Carmilla dropped her attention from the digital painting to Dr Cochrane. She was suddenly very aware that she was still wearing the journey’s sweat, and that it had turned stale in the ducted office air.

Dr Cochrane pressed on, guessing, “Was it that person you were with - Laura?”

At her name Carmilla felt both thrilled and ashamed, so, not knowing which one to feel, she pushed back instead, “What is it to you?” Feeling comfort in the shield that this response gave her, she continued, “You’ve been on my back about actually opening up or whatever for so long, and I finally give in and you...”

“Expect you to open up?” Dr Cochrane finished. “This isn’t about me, Carmilla. This is about you. If you want this to work, I need you to trust me.”

Unwilling to give up, Carmilla asked petulantly, “Why?”

“You contacted me,” the doctor reminded her. “You came here, you made that first step. I want to take the next steps with you, but I can’t do that if you dig your heels in.”

Carmilla was caught between the familiar stubbornness to say empty words, and the desperation to say the ones that meant the most. Her eyes skipped from the doctor in front of her, to the digital painting, to the clock where the second hand hopped to each second with a jerky back-and-forth.

“Laura.”

It was an answer to Dr Cochrane’s first question, but Carmilla couldn’t explain much further than that; the small gesture had felt like everything.

“Thank you, Carmilla,” the psychiatrist said, and the stubborn side of Carmilla heard it as nails on a chalkboard. She wanted to leave the room, to never come back, to retreat into herself and abandon this - but she didn’t.

Instead she asked, “So, what now?”

\---

The Rover tore across the surface of the planet, kicking up dust and rocks as it went. From the inside, the dirt crunching under the tires rumbled at a volume just under the music. Kirsch had hooked the Rover up with a sound system during one of the quieter periods (although, really, they were all quiet periods), and she blasted the music off the data stick he’d left in there, which had a surprising amount of 70s girl punk rock.

She could already see the mirrors in the distance, lining the Bowl and creating a shining circle so bright that they looked like lights on a runway, guiding Carmilla towards them.

She reached the Bowl far quicker than she expected and the reflected light hit the windshield, blinding her for a moment. She cupped her hand along her brow and the Bowl came back into view. Usually, they’d angle the mirrors away if someone was expected, but she wasn’t expected.

The trip down the Bowl was also quicker, and didn’t feel as dizzying as it had before. Being able to see everything clearly in the daylight helped, but Carmilla wasn’t naive enough to think that was the only factor.

Against the dazzling column of light, the guardrail was a fine film of blue specks glittering in the air, and Carmilla caught herself staring at it a few times.

She made it to the bottom of the Bowl and turned the music down to a more acceptable level as she put in the code for the automatic Docking Hangar airlock system. The automatic system took far longer than door techs, with a lot of failsafes and safety measures that were largely unnecessary. Once Demeter started shipping out produce they would probably start using door techs, but for now they weren’t needed.

After three more songs had finished, the inner door unlocked and Carmilla pulled the Rover into the spot that Kirsch had parked it when they’d first come. The docks were just as empty - one night hadn’t made a difference to them - and against the lack of change, the difference within her was thrown into sharp relief.

She debated whether to bring her helmet or not, before grabbing it and pulling herself up through the hatch.

As her feet hit the ground, the doors to the Docking Hangar opened and she looked up, half expecting Laura but instead seeing the morale officer looking particularly displeased about something. “I thought you left.”

“I did.”

Betty crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And now you’re back.”

Carmilla looked around her pointedly - _duh_.

“For how long?”

“For as long as I’m needed.”

Carmilla shifted her grip on the helmet, resting it against her hip, and Betty narrowed her eyes on the movement, as if trying to read what it meant.

“So, what?” Betty snapped, finally dropping the staring competition with Carmilla’s helmet. “You decided that your presence was necessary for construction?”

“That’s not why I came back,” Carmilla replied evenly.

That stopped Betty, who shut her mouth and stared at Carmilla for a long moment. Then she asked, “Why did you come back?”

Carmilla regarded the morale officer who was a relative stranger to her, and, with stunning ease that felt like simply releasing a breath, she said, “Laura.”

\---

_Last night_

“May I ask you a question?” Dr Cochrane’s eyes were fixed on Carmilla’s, but her fingers had found her tablet pen and she was running it between her fingers.

Carmilla gave a loose shrug. She could feel that her face had fallen into a pout but didn’t have the energy or will to change it.

“What do you want to get out of this?” Dr Cochrane asked.

“I want to be better.”

Dr Cochrane’s hands paused on the pen. “What do you mean by ‘better’?”

“I want to be...” Carmilla sat forward in the chair, propping her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands together as she pushed the penny from one hand to the other. It passed quicker and quicker as she tried to drain the itching energy that covered her skin into this small coin.

“I want to let things go. I want to...” Carmilla dragged in a thick breath and let it out loudly through her nose. “I want to be able to talk. About...” She abandoned the sentence; her hands too occupied to finish it off with a gesture, so she just shook her head. “I want to be someone that deserves her.” Each sentence felt like sucking the venom out of her, painful and bitter, but she felt better for having said it because she knew it was the absolute truth.

She’d expected to feel stupid, but when she managed to look up at Dr Cochrane she didn’t find a twisted mask of pity. Instead, the psychiatrist simply asked, “Why do you think you’re not that person?”

\---

Carmilla stepped out onto the floor of the Bowl in her suit. The dust spiralled into the air around her boot, and she watched it re-settle again before looking ahead to the Bowl that she’d spent three days staring at from behind a window.

Out on the ground the sunlight was even brighter, but through the protection of the visor it wasn’t painful. She craned her neck to see the roof of the Bowl and the contrast of the darkness and the light superimposed over her vision, so that even with her eyes closed the ghosts of colour continued to play across the back of her eyelids.

The urge to cry overcame her, quickly followed by the urge to smile, and both of these chased each other down until she felt a tear snake its way down her cheek, catching at the upturned corner of her mouth before slipping down to the line of her jaw. She wasn’t sad, nor was she particularly happy. She just... was.

And not having anything to fight for, or against, made her realise just how hard she’d been fighting before.

She opened her eyes again and started making her way to Pod 3, where Betty had told her Laura was, knowing that whatever happened there she would be okay.

\---

_Last night_

“Please,” Carmilla scoffed, “I’m an asshole.”

“Why do you say that?” the doctor asked in a perfectly calm voice.

“God, I don’t know, I say shitty things?”

“And these shitty things that you say,” Dr Cochrane said, ignoring Carmilla’s eyebrow at her repetition of the word ‘shitty’, “do you say them to keep people from getting close to you?”

“Well, aren’t you a modern day Freud,” Carmilla replied dryly.

Again, Carmilla was ignored, as Dr Cochrane turned the pen over, letting it fall slowly through her fingers until the tip of it touched the desk.

“Are you scared of people leaving?”

Carmilla’s mouth went dry and she gritted her teeth. “Isn’t everyone?”

“Are you scared of Laura leaving?”

“She did leave.”

Dr Cochrane’s expression didn’t change, she just waited for Carmilla to continue.

Carmilla swallowed. “She was reassigned.”

Dr Cochrane nodded with a meaningful expression on her face, and Carmilla wondered if she could just leave now. Would Zeus revoke the psychiatric leave if she just walked out of the damn room? Probably.

“Why are you scared?”

“Because-” Carmilla was ready to fire back another response, she was just getting into the rhythm of jabbing and weaving around the questions, but this one stumped her. “Because-”

Dr Cochrane waited and it only made Carmilla’s frustration grow as she tried again, “Because then she’s gone. Then she’s another person who left, and I’m just here, stuck on this fucking...”

“People leave.”

Carmilla’s eyes snapped to Dr Cochrane’s, and she felt like she’d taken a hit right to the gut but she couldn’t understand why.

“People leave,” Carmilla echoed flatly. “What kind of shrink are you?”

Instead of reacting to the biting question, Dr Cochrane said, “People leave, it’s what happens. They can come into your life, and they can leave it. You need to know that if they do, they aren’t taking anything from you.”

Carmilla wanted to ask what she was talking about, to scoff and say she didn’t think that - but she couldn’t. Somehow, she’d never been able to put her fear into words, and she knew that _this was it_ \- the same way that you knew when someone pressed on a bruise that didn’t show on your skin.

Seemingly unaware of the effect her words had, Dr Cochrane continued, “You are still a complete whole person, even after they leave.”

Carmilla didn’t say anything, but the penny kept passing between her hands.

“If they want to leave, that’s on them. That’s their decision, and that’s okay. Because _you_ ’re here.”

There was a long silence, filled only with the tick of the clock. Carmilla counted each tick in her head as she stared hard at her hands, willing the tears to not spill from her eyes.

“You don’t need to be better, Carmilla. You just need to be you. Without the fear, without the hurt. Because you? You are worthy. You are worthy of anyone and anything, and most of all, you are worthy of happiness.”

\---

The Pods had a glass exterior with an airlock tunnel extension made out of a durable white sheeting, not unlike Zeus’. The Pod’s glass could change from clear to opaque on a sliding scale, depending on the Pod plot’s needs for sunlight. Each Pod was an acre in size, with an extra lab section dedicated to developing plant strains and soil composition.

Carmilla reached the airlock and pressed the button on the touch screen to the side of the door, waiting for it to open. Once it did she stepped inside and saw Laura through the small window on the inner door.

She was working in the lab, examining something under a microscope with her hair pulled into a bun that sat high on her head. Laura started to make notes on her tablet as her lips moved, either talking to herself or recording a log; it was hard to tell as the sound didn’t make it through the door.

The airlock started to pressurize, drawing Laura’s eyes to the window, and they locked with Carmilla’s through the glass. Her face was unreadable, although it quickly faded into a surprise that didn’t pass even when the pressurisation finished and Carmilla took off her helmet and stepped into the lab.

Two things became clear once she did, one - the smell of fertiliser was thick and rank in the air of the lab, and two - Laura had been speaking to Kirsch, not herself. He was sitting on a stool out of sight of the window, his feet propped on the crossbar, which made his legs bend up so sharply that his knees were level with his chest. When Carmilla stepped into view he gasped and almost fell off the stool.

“Hey.”

Laura and Kirsch both stared at her blankly.

Suddenly, Kirsch stood, almost knocking the stool to the ground in the process, but he quickly caught and righted it. “I’m gonna give you guys some... yeah.”

He grabbed his helmet off the floor and went to pass by Carmilla, but before he could enter the airlock, she grabbed him by the arm and said, “I’ll find you later.”

He gave her a crumpled, conflicted look that seemed very much like he was going to cry, so she let go of him, but he wrapped his arms around her in a quick squeeze of a hug that she didn’t have enough time to return before he was shoving on his helmet and closing the airlock behind him.

“You’re here,” Laura said, sounding like she didn’t know what to make of that.

“You said we could talk.”

“I did,” Laura agreed slowly. She turned away from Carmilla, fiddling with the microscope and switching it off so that the screen next to it went blank. “I just didn’t know you’d be, you know, turning up. Like, right here. Now.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Laura spun around to face her. “No!” She winced at her volume before repeating in a more normal voice, “No.”

“Is it okay that I’m here?”

“It’s...” Laura swallowed and crossed her arms before quickly uncrossing them and resting her hands on the bench behind her. “It’s fine.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“Well you didn’t give me any warning,” Laura snapped.

Carmilla dropped her head, her eyes fixing on the feet at the base of the lab counters, and she heard Laura let out a long breath.

“I’m sorry,” Laura said gently. “I didn’t mean- I’m just surprised.”

Again, the change inside Carmilla caught against the lack of it around her, and she lifted her face to meet Laura’s gaze. “Don’t apologise. You’re right, I should have let you know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Laura echoed.

Carmilla shrugged a nod and Laura looked at her as if she’d grown a second head.

A loud foghorn sounded on the speaker overhead, startling both of them, and Laura gave Carmilla an apologetic smile. “I have to check on the plots.” She started to move towards the chamber that separated the lab from the plots, but hesitated.

She turned to Carmilla and asked, “Do you want to come in?”

“Uh.”

“Come on,” Laura encouraged, “see it in person.”

Carmilla had half-expected the words to come harshly, but because it was Laura, they just were.

“Okay.”

Carmilla stepped towards the chamber, but Laura stopped her with a raised hand. She grimaced and dropped her eyes to Carmilla’s space suit.

“Oh.” Carmilla started stripping out of the space suit, until she was standing in her grey skins. She left the suit in a pile by the airlock door, next to where Laura’s had been hung neatly, and when she turned back around Laura was blushing and holding out a paper-thin set of blue coveralls with a zip down the front of them.

They matched Laura’s, although Laura had used a strap of similar material to cinch hers at the waist, while Carmilla’s hung loosely enough that it barely felt like she was wearing anything over her skins.

Carmilla stepped into the decon chamber first as Laura inputted something into the touch screen, before joining her. The chambers walls and floors were made from grey plastic and once the door closed the room went dark. Carmilla’s breathing quickened into short painful bursts, until Laura’s hand slipped into hers.

“It’s only for ten seconds.”

The UV light flashed on, and the light blue was so bright against the previous darkness that Carmilla’s head spun for a moment. Laura’s grip tightened and she felt herself steady. The light stayed on and Carmilla’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, wondering how she hadn’t noticed the column of bulbs on the side walls.

Then the phosphorescence in the bulbs faded, so that instead of being blinding they just threw forward the outline of the glass tubing, and finally the chamber went back to black. The Pod-side door opened and Laura was the first to get out, keeping her hand on Carmilla’s as she helped the engineer feel her way out of the chamber feet first.

As she’d left her suit boots in the lab, she was stepping onto the floor barefoot, and was surprised by how warm the floor was. In fact, the whole Pod was warm, not unbearably so, but comfortably.

The Pod was even more impressive on the inside than it was on the outside. There were cylindrical baskets hanging from the roof in rows across the width of Pod, all of which could be lowered, as well as rows that went along the ground in raised troughs. The roof and floor rows alternated, so that if the roof baskets were lowered to the ground they would fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

There were three sections with aisles in between them, and at the end of each row in the three sections were screens that tracked the progress of the growth in each planter with stunningly specific detail.

Pod 3 was scheduled for sunlight, and it streamed in through the glass, casting an even glow across all of the rows of dirt, some of them with barely noticeable shoots, tiny specks of green among the brown.

Carmilla descended the steps from the platform without consciously deciding to, walking towards the closest planter as a light but full wonder took root in her chest. She’d forgotten the smell of earth, no, not forgotten it; it had remained somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind, dismissed as unnecessary knowledge. Now it came flooding back so strongly that Carmilla felt every cell in her body swell with it.

She couldn’t see the sprinkler system, but she could smell it. The wet earth laced a metallic sweetness through the air and made her think of Mattie and her full smile, and the way her laughter poured out of her as an enthusiastic rolling melody.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Carmilla turned to Laura, who was looking at the Pod and brimming with pride.

Instead of answering her, because they both knew the answer, Carmilla asked, “What do you miss most about Earth?”

Laura came down the stairs slowly, starting to check the screens at the end of each row, and Carmilla followed her from a few metres back.

“My Dad,” Laura replied. “And my dog, but he passed away just after I left.” Laura paused at one of the screens, before looking back at Carmilla. “It’s weird, even though I know he’s gone, it feels like he isn’t. Earth feels... frozen. Like if I went back, everything would be exactly the same, and so would I.”

“Would you?”

Laura considered her for a long moment. “No.” Then she continued to move down the line of the left section of rows.

“Oh, and fast food,” she added. “And real food. And junk food.”

“So you miss food,” Carmilla summarised, looking closer at one of the planter screens that showed the germination rate holding steady at 85%.

“Yeah,” Laura agreed sheepishly as she rounded the end of the section and started up the middle section. “What about you?”

Carmilla ducked under the hanging planters to meet Laura in the middle aisle. “Real books. Food. Proper alcohol. Fire.” Laura walked past, but kept glancing at her between screens. “The rain.”

That made Laura stop, and she turned back to Carmilla to ask, “The rain?”

As a reply Carmilla shrugged, and Laura didn’t push, only admitted, “I miss the rain too.”

Carmilla swallowed, reminded herself of what Dr Cochrane had said and, in a voice that cracked only slightly, she explained, “It reminds me of my sister.” Laura gave her a quizzical look and before she could ask, Carmilla replied, “Adoptive sister.”

Laura didn’t move, but Carmilla did, walking back towards the front of the Pod and gesturing for Laura to continue working. “It was raining the last moment we had together. Really badly actually. It delayed the phase 3 launch for three days.”

“I remember,” Laura said, nodding emphatically, “I had to wait for it to clear before I could start my training, I was stuck in the next town over at this terrifying bed and breakfast that was full of all these creepy dolls...” Laura trailed off and shuddered. “Sorry, go on.”

Carmilla barked a laugh. “I was done, tell me more about the dolls.”

With her permission Laura went on, drawling out an, “Oh my God,” complete with an exaggerated eyeroll. “The owner had names for each of them and put on all these different voices, which were meant to be, like, the doll’s voices? Then for breakfast she’d line them up along the walls. And we’re talking like, shelves and shelves _full_.”

Carmilla’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Laura confirmed. “And then the power went out.”

“Fuck _that_.”

“Right?!” Laura leaned over to one of the planters, picking up a clump of soil between her thumb and pointer and squeezing it between them. Satisfied with the result, she stood and brushed the dirt off her fingers, continuing to move down the aisle.

“So...” Laura reached the end of the middle section and turned to face Carmilla. “Not that I don’t enjoy sharing my Night of the Living Dolls experience, but...”

“You want to know why I’m here,” Carmilla finished for her.

“Not that I don’t want you here. I do.” Something flashed over Laura’s face, but before Carmilla could try and decipher it, Laura spun back around and started on the last section of planters. “But we had a pretty heavy conversation last night, and then this morning you show up and you’re all...”

“Different?” Carmilla offered.

Laura nodded slowly. “Different is one of the words I’d use.”

“What are the other words you’d use?”

Laura looked at her over her shoulder, her hand frozen over one of the screens that she’d tapped into. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Laura’s attention went back to the screen and Carmilla let herself take another step towards Laura, enough so that there was still a few feet gap between them, but this proximity seemed to make Laura pause.

“I never wanted you to stop sending those messages,” Carmilla said in a low voice. “They were the best part of my day.”

“I know,” Laura replied without turning around. She started swiping through the screen’s tabs with an aimless swiftness. “I mean, not about the ‘best part of your day’ bit, the other bit.”

Carmilla took another step forward, well outside of Laura’s personal bubble but it still felt achingly close.

“I saw Dr Cochrane. We talked about a lot of things. One of those things was...” Carmilla steeled herself. “With everyone, it always felt like- like I’d give them these secrets, and then they would leave, and by doing that they’d take part of me with them too.”

There was a long silence and Carmilla was about to try and fill it when Laura turned with her eyes shining with tears.

“Is that how I made you feel?”

“Whoa, no, no,” Carmilla replied firmly, “ _I_ made myself feel like that. I wasn’t trying to make you- I was just trying to explain.” Then, emphatically, “Seriously, it’s not your fault.”

Laura nodded but the sadness hadn’t left her eyes. “I wish you hadn’t felt like that.”

“That makes two of us.”

They lapsed into a silence, although the Pod around them seemed to hum with the promise of life just under the surface.

“How do you feel about it now?” Laura asked, so quietly that Carmilla’s heart broke gently for the scientist, but instead of pulling away, she leaned in.

“You had to leave,” Carmilla practically whispered her reply, at the same volume as Laura’s question, as if being too loud would fracture the moment.

Instantly, Carmilla knew that she’d said the right thing, because Laura’s eyes welled with fresh tears, but this time there was no sadness, only relief, as she gulped out a soft, “I did.”

Carmilla swallowed, and this time she spoke with more volume, but the same measure of careful consideration, “And if you left again, whether you had to or you wanted to, I would miss you, but you wouldn’t take a piece of me with you.”

Laura blinked up at her.

“You’d miss me?”

Carmilla smiled. “Is that all you took from that, Hollis?”

“I took other things!” Laura exclaimed. The tears and the quietness had passed, and her expression melted into a sweet smile. “That’s just what I took the most.”

“Crack listening skills, cutie.”

Laura rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop her smile from growing. Stubbornly trying to hide it from Carmilla, she spun around and went back to walking down the aisle and checking the screens. Carmilla trailed after her, this time closer than the last, but still keeping the distance between them.

Once Laura reached the end of the aisle she spent longer than she needed to going through the reports, and Carmilla waited. She watched the way the sun danced through Laura’s hair, picking out the gold and not-so-gold, and making each strand shine just the same.

Laura spun on the spot to face Carmilla, and there was something in her face that was hopeful and careful all at the same time, paired with a wildness in her eyes that Carmilla met willingly.

“So what you’re saying is...?”

Carmilla waited for the end of the question but when it didn’t come she supplied, “I’m sorry for how I treated you.”

“And you’re...?”

“Staying.”

“And we...?” Laura gestured between them.

Carmilla shrugged. “That’s up to you, buttercup.”

“You’re using a lot of pet names.”

“And you’re not finishing a lot of sentences.”

“I’m trying to figure out where we stand,” Laura pointed out hotly.

Carmilla shot a look down at their feet; hers barefoot and Laura’s in slip ons. Laura huffed and rolled her eyes, muttering, “Smartass. You know what I mean.”

Carmilla smiled at her, but something about the softness of her expression seemed to only annoy Laura more. That was, until Carmilla took a step forward, not close enough to touch but almost. This move stunned Laura, and Carmilla watched her annoyance slip into a breathless anticipation.

Carmilla reached out and pressed her knuckles against Laura’s, her fingers extending so that they brushed over Laura’s. Laura was still pouting, but her fingers twitched just so, so that they could slot into Carmilla’s if either of them moved just a fraction more. So Carmilla did. Her thumb traced down the side of Laura’s hand, and Laura captured it with hers, trapping it firmly against her hand.

Laura tugged, just once, on Carmilla’s hand and Carmilla leaned into the scientist, but kept her balance. Laura was looking up at her with huge eyes; her lashes long and full against her skin, which had been tanned from working long days in the Pods. Carmilla chanced a glance down at Laura’s mouth, and she heard Laura’s breath stutter for a moment, or maybe that was her own. When she looked back up Laura’s eyes were on _her_ mouth, and her pupils were blown.

Carmilla lifted a hand - the hand not holding Laura’s - up to Laura’s face. At first she was going to tip her chin up, but the move struck her as too commanding, so instead she just touched her once, very lightly, on the jaw.

Laura lifted her chin anyway, her attention rising to meet Carmilla.

“You saved me,” Carmilla said, a hair’s breadth over a whisper. No, that wasn’t right - she tried again, “You found me.”

“You found yourself,” Laura replied, “I was just by your side when you did it.”

And yes, that was it - that was perfect. Once again, Laura knew exactly what she meant without her having to find the words to say it.

In that moment, Carmilla was quite sure that she was in love with this maddening, stubborn scientist who had crashed the science-class Rover she’d designed, pulled her through a storm, and waited for her to be ready. She was sure of it in a way that she had only guessed at before, sure of it in a way that made kissing her seem like the only thing to do.

So, she did.

It was slow at first, and clumsy; their rhythms were off. But it built from there, and they fell into sync in a way that made Carmilla’s knees weak and her heart strong and _God-_ Laura’s mouth was so soft that she was halfway to passing out.

They kissed like that, and then faster, and slower again; they matched each other’s languid patience, and eager hunger, and everything that fell in between.

All around them life began, green shoots pressing up through the dirt to meet the sun, and they began too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that brings this story to an end. Thank you to everyone who read, kudos-ed and commented, you have all been absolute gems through this story that is really, really close to my heart.
> 
> I'm currently working on an epilogue, so hopefully will get that up soon.
> 
> Thank you again for the support, you wonderful people.


	7. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait, the epilogue was being tricky and I ended up rewriting it four times, so this is the final (compact) result. Enjoy!

Carmilla lay on the sand, soaking in the warmth of the sun through the rays above her and the sand below. It was weird - she hated the beach, but there was something incredibly comforting about it right now, with the sound of the waves lapping at the sand, and the caw of seagulls overhead.

The last time she’d been to the beach was with her parents. Her mom had helped her build a sandcastle, while her dad bought them all ice cream from the shop at the edge of the sand. She’d dropped hers two bites in and was about to start wailing when both her parents had offered her theirs.

She’d accepted her dad’s - her mom had vanilla, which was super boring - and shared it with him as he dug a moat around the sandcastle.

Carmilla realised she was holding a chocolate ice cream cone, and - upon sitting up - found a sandcastle at her feet.

“Carm?”

She turned to the voice, but no one was there. The entire beach was empty, and something about that felt wrong. She wasn’t alone, not anymore.

The ice cream started to melt down her fingers.

“Carm.”

She woke up.

Grey ceiling, white sheets, cold air, Laura.

 _Laura_.

The warmth that came from seeing the scientist in bed next to her was blurred by the static tiredness that filled her mind and body. She could still feel grains of sand on her skin and had to check her hand to make sure it wasn’t covered in ice cream.

“You’re awake,” Laura said, somehow wide awake and smiling brightly.

Carmilla cleared her throat and shifted far enough away that she could take Laura in without feeling like she was staring directly into the sun. She noticed the blue mug in the scientist’s hands. “Coffee cocoa?”

Laura bounced slightly on the bed and confirmed, “Coffee cocoa.”

“Hm,” Carmilla grunted, but accepted the mug that Laura retrieved from the side table. “What time is it?” She had a sip of her coffee cocoa and scowled at the sweetness. Without Perry, the only way to make the coffee drinkable was to add the equally undrinkable cocoa powder; the two worked far better together than either of them did alone.

“Nine o’clock.”

“In the morning?” Carmilla groaned, clapping a hand over her eyes.

“You told me to get you up early,” Laura reminded her, “for the Transport Tube test.”

“Early like eleven, not nine.” Carmilla took several generous sips of her coffee cocoa, and the combined sugar and caffeine hit was equivalent to a dose of rocket fuel.

“I’m sorry.” Laura paused as she watched Carmilla finish off her drink. “You got in late last night.”

“Yeah.” Carmilla put down the mug. “Doc wanted to talk about Mattie.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll be more okay when I’m fully conscious.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura apologised again.

“It’s okay.” Carmilla leaned over to kiss her. “Make it up to me in the shower.”

Laura grinned against Carmilla’s mouth.

\---

Kirsch burped loudly and leaned back with a satisfied grin on his face.

They were in the temporary Gear Tent that had been put up in the centre of the Bowl, which was used to store their gear and work on building parts for the Tube, so that they didn’t have to travel all the way back to the workshop.

It wasn’t very large or impressive; it was just a plastic tent with a loud, clunky system that looked like an aircon unit attached to it, which delivered breathable air and kept the tent pressurised.

They’d moved all of the gear into untidy piles at their feet and were sitting on various sized boxes. For some reason Kirsch had the smallest one, and Laura had the largest, which was so large that her feet barely touched the floor as they swung back and forth.

The test went well. Not perfectly, but the issues were small and fixable, and the fault of the materials rather than the designs. Zeus was impressed, Kirsch was thrilled, and Carmilla was pleased. Pleased enough that she agreed to come out to the Gear Tent with the latest of Kirsch’s alcohol batches - which now also included hard cider, thanks to Pod 4’s first batch of apples.

Kirsch’s cider was far preferable to his beer. The fresh apples he’d used (officially classified as the unacceptable ones of the harvest) made it taste like it was actually meant for human consumption. Both Carmilla and Laura had chosen to drink the cider, while Kirsch called them traitors and set about consuming the beer on his own.

“Hey,” he said, “d’you think if we make the air compressor-?”

“No! No-ope, no. Nope.” Laura shook her head so hard that it sent her hair flying.

“You good, Cupcake?” Carmilla asked, mildly entertained.

“We have spent the past...” Laura tried to calculate it in her head before giving up. “ _Forever_ talking about the Tube. I get it. It’s super cool and you guys did a great job, and I’m really proud of you, but we are _not_ spending your celebratory drinks talking about friction and maglevs and whatever. No. We’ll go back to talking about it tomorrow but for now - no.”

“Aw.” Carmilla lifted her eyebrows at Kirsch. “She’s proud of us.”

“Duh. There’s a lot to be proud of, bro.”

“That’s true,” Carmilla agreed.

Laura rolled her eyes and placed her hand over Carmilla’s on top of the box edge. Laura’s skin was soft and warm despite the Gear Tent’s cool oxygenated air, and Carmilla leaned into it.

The three of them fell into a comfortable silence.

The sun had set, and it had grown dark quickly, as it always did. The Pods were in night-time mode and sat as dim beacons along the edge of the Bowl, while behind them floor lights marked a path back to the main building.

Carmilla leaned back and stared up through the roof of the Gear Tent. The plastic distorted the view of the night sky, but the stars were as bright as ever, pinpricks of brilliant light with blurred edges. Deja vu struck Carmilla so strongly and unexpectedly that her breath caught, until Laura’s thumb ran over hers, and she remembered - Zeus, Laura, and the start of something inside her.

She looked at the scientist next to her, surrendering the universe for the person who had helped her open herself to it again.

Laura’s eyes met hers a moment later, sensing her gaze. Her eyes weren’t questioning; they just looked back with a simple openness that stunned Carmilla and reminded her of the conversation with Dr Cochrane the previous night.

_Carmilla paused, considering her next words. “Everything is weirdly great.”_

_Dr Cochrane watched her through the tablet screen. “Why ‘weirdly’?”_

_“I don’t know.” Carmilla ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back and then letting it fall into her face again. “I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”_

_“It will pass,” Dr Cochrane promised. “You’ve earned this, Carmilla.”_

_“I know,” Carmilla agreed, and she did._

And she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! Hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it.
> 
> Join me on tumblr at [churchofyourcurves](http://www.churchofyourcurves.tumblr.com)


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